


Beauty Is In The Eye

by Thegrimreaperisanerd



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mentions of Prostitution, Original Character Death(s), Original Character Suicide, Teen Angst, a lot of swearing, mentions of abuse, there's a catholic mass at one point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 06:10:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9308768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegrimreaperisanerd/pseuds/Thegrimreaperisanerd
Summary: A year or so after the battle on the moon the world is at peace and SPARTOI have disbanded, but when Kid gets a call from Maba telling him a reclusive witch called ‘The Eye’ has gone rogue, he calls Liz and Patty from their new job to go after her. Unfortunately, what at first seemed like a revisit to the good old days goes wrong when Liz is separated from the others and faces what life could have been like if she’d never been born a weapon.





	1. Enter The Illusion

**Author's Note:**

> Yo! Resbang! This is actually my first year participating but besides the stress of finishing on time I've had a really good experience with it! I have two wonderful artists to thank who are @hikari-draws and @strawberrymeister on tumblr 
> 
> EDIT: art links added, I forgot cos I'm a huge dummy...  
> http://strawberrymeister.tumblr.com/post/155865374811/beauty-is-in-the-eye-is-a-wonderful-fic-by  
> http://hikari-draws.tumblr.com/post/155855319121/beauty-is-in-the-eye-resbang-2016-its-here

To say the day had been slow-going was an understatement. Staff and students at the DWMA had grown used to it, Asura was now safely trapped on the moon and the witches were at peace with humanity. Almost overnight the state of the world had plummeted from calamity to the occasional blip of kishen activity. Needless to say, this left the adept members of EAT class the (now-dissolved) SPARTOI task force bored out their minds.

The weeks following Asura’s defeat had been vibrant and fast-paced with celebrations and Kid’s coronation, then one by one students planned the paths they’d take now there was no immediate threat. Tsubaki was the first to leave Death City, returning to Japan to spend much needed time with her parents. Black*Star followed suit, intending to learn more about the Samurai way and honour Mifune’s memory, aware within Tsubaki: Masamune also watched and judged him. Next Kim set off for the witch realm, accompanied by Jackie, they began scouting out young witches for a special class at the DWMA to provide them with a less chaotic output for their magic. This class was given the nickname _CHARM_ and Angela was among the first to join.

The trees turned glorious shades of Amber to mark a whole season since the battle on the moon and Maka heartily insisted she could take over teaching so Marie could give the expectant baby her full-attention, Maka in turn became renowned for being a fair and fierce lecturer for meisters. Soul also took up teaching and although he lacked the same level of enthusiasm shown by his meister, stories of his various sacrifices during their partnership gained him a lot of respect with his weapon students. Liz and Patty travelled the world in an attempt to rehabilitate other weapon children roaming the streets like they once did. Meanwhile, Kid did his best to sort out the aftermath of madness’ brief reign and cement the patchy deal he’d struck hastily with the witches.

By Christmas Kilik had 'retired' from meistering to work with the children sent to Death City by Liz and Patty, although when a Kishen showed up near the city he, accompanied by Fire and Thunder, tended to be the first one on scene. Similarly taking a step back from combat, Oxford became obsessed with Medusa’s black blood research and studied it intensely with Akane and Harvard in the hopes they could find a way to counteract it if it ever became a problem again. As more members of SPARTOI parted from their colleagues in pursuit of greater goals, the ones left behind became fatigued with the ease of their more passive roles.

Death The Kid was certain nobody felt the slow days like he did. He may have been being dramatic, but since his days now consisted of standing in the Death Room for hours on end on the off chance the mirror chimed; counting every cloud that floated past and listening to Spirit prattle on about a woman who’d snubbed him in _Chupacabra’s_ , he decided he’d rather fight Asura alone and unarmed than face this routine for the rest of eternity. So when the hollow drone signalling his father's mi… -his mirror was receiving a call, Kid struggled to contain his excitement. _Calm down._ He thought. _One of the younger students could be calling because they're hurt._ Deep ripples faded into fog and then a vague outline as Kid pressed his finger to the glass, his authoritative expression melting into surprise when the silhouette established itself as the grandmother of all witches.

"Oh, Maba-sama! Good to hear from you, it's been a while." As Kid spoke, Spirit who may very well have been asleep standing up, became alert and twirled to face the mirror.

Maba herself appeared nervous. "Nyamu… [Unfortunately this isn't a social call, we have a problem…]"

"Oh?"

Under a large, lavender hat, Kid could see one yellow eye narrowing. "[As you already know, a few witches didn't take the treaty very well and… well… one of them has gone off on her own]"

Kid frowned "…To do what?"

"[Uh… We don't know, our witch spies suggest she doesn't have a fully functional plan, I personally think she's just bitter about the whole thing.]" Maba shrugged

"Do you think she could be dangerous?"

"[Quite possibly! It's been hard enough for some of the more morally stable witches to keep their chaotic instincts under control, it's not a huge stretch to say she may try to hurt civilians or even come after DWMA students!]

 _That's not a thing to be so chipper about…_ "Should I send a meister after her?"

Maba shuffled with unease. "[As you can imagine this is an embarrassing situation for us. I've kept it on the down low because I'm worried that hearing about this will encourage other witches who're on the fence to revolt, I'd rather that you didn't discuss this with people your end, too…]"

Kid could feel Spirit's gaze on him: very few humans understood what Maba was saying, which was probably the only thing letting her speak comfortably through the mirror connection.

"[I don't want you sending one of your students: banned or not they still desire death scythes. If sent after a witch they might not be able to resist the temptation of a killing blow...]"

Kid gritted his teeth, he wanted to defend his students but he knew that some of them were itching to scale that final peak, maybe even enough to risk the agreement he'd worked so hard to make a reality. "I understand. What do you want me to do?"

"[Child, I'd like you to go. I think if confronted by you, she'd be scared out of her wits! She may even tell friends who're thinking of going rogue not to bother! And I trust you a little more than your young counterparts… No offence to them. How about it?"

 _Oh thank god! Get me out of this room! Maba-sama, I could kiss you right now!_ "Well, if you think I'm the right person for the job I'd be more than happy to oblige."

"[Good! She's most commonly known in the witch world as "The Eye". I don't think she'd be willing to engage you in combat but maybe take those guns of yours with you just in case.]"

Although he was trying to remain professional, Kid couldn't help the grin that crossed his face when he thought about being reunited with Liz and Patty. _And for a mission no less!_ "Ah! Of course! I think they're currently in New York so I'll call when we've finished up here."

"[That's convenient, the last piece of intel we have on her says she warped from the witch realm to somewhere in Brooklyn. Oh, one more thing, child. So far my trust in you has been well-founded but I don't want you killing The Eye in pursuit of a witch's soul either.]"

"I'm not quite that easily tempted, Maba-sama…"

"[No, I didn't think you were, but I thought I'd give fair warning. This agreement between witches and the DWMA is a flimsy thing indeed, it'd be more than embarrassing on your end if it was soiled by yet another greedy Grim Reaper… Anyways, good luck! Have fun! Keep me updated on the situation!]" Maba bowed and closed the connection leaving Kid with a level of uncertainty that somewhat dampened his initial excitement.

"I can't believe you just had an entire conversation with a woman who can only say one word!" Spirit said.

*                *                *

The sound of her boots smacking on concrete filled Liz's ears as she ran. As her breathing quickened she focused on the reassuring weight of Patty's weapon form in her right hand. _twenty-seven days worth of work leading up to this._ She grinned. "Get back here you little punk!"

A younger girl - not used to running, not used to being on the wrong end of a confrontation - was reaching her limit a few ft in front. The slam of a foot against a wooden crate and pained yelling echoed off the alley walls. The girl crumpled.

Liz slowed into a jog, then a gentle saunter, struggling to talk without panting. "Thought you were hot shit, huh?"

The girl in question was hunched over, shaking.

"Oh… Oh! Are you like actually hurt?! Oh shit kid, hang on-" Liz dropped to one knee as she got close, at which point the girl swung a brick chunk (the thing she'd been hunched over) in a wide arc and caught Liz on the chin. "OW! You FUCKER!" Liz snarled and the girl's eyes went wide as she realised just how badly she'd messed up. Liz grabbed a handful of the girl's stringy, red hair and slammed her face into the ground, once, twice. _Okay the anger's subsiding_ … Three times. _That fucking hurt, damnit!_ The girl howled in pain and dropped the brick, clutching her bloody nose instead.

"Oww! Owie! You bitch! You fucking ugly bitch!" She started crying.

 _How pathetic…_ "Ugly? Man, are you blind or stupid? Besides, I ain't the one with blood pissing down my face." Liz dragged a hand through her hair in a confident sweep, despite the fact she also had a facial injury.

"Sis!" Patty giggled. "That was a bit extreme! She's like twelve!"

"Hey, the brick hurt!"

"I'm seventeen…" The girl moaned.

Liz used the hand tangled in the girl's hair to pull her to her knees, despite the snarling protests. "Look cindy-"

"Sarah-"

"Whatever. Where's the kid?"

Sarah looked spitefully at Liz, one hand still cradling her bleeding face. "I have no idea what you're on about, you mad woman!"

Liz let go of Sarah's hair and sighed. "What didya' get for Christmas?"

Sarah raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Pardon?"

"It's a simple enough question! What didya' get for Christmas!?"

There was silence as Sarah tried to figure out if Liz was being serious. "I… Dad got me an Xbox and-"

"Ooooo!" Patty interrupted, her voice tinny from being in weapon form. "Didya' hear that, sis?! An Xbox!"

Liz smirked. "I know, Patty, fancy huh? What else, Cindy?"

Sarah felt too uneasy to respond let alone correct Liz on her name.

"Alright, Alright!" Liz put her hands up in a gesture of peace. "We don't like that question, how about some new ones… You live in a big house Cindy? With your parents? Do they love you?"

Reluctantly Sarah began to nod and Liz got closer to her with each confirmation.

"Then _what the fuck_ do you think you're doing out here?"

Sarah stared at Liz: there was a cold, personal anger in her eyes. "I… I don't understand…"

Liz exploded. "Yeah, of course you don't! Cos' you've had everything handed to you on a fuckin' plate! But that wasn't enough, you find some poor kid with the ability to turn into a weapon and you're like _'Oooo! How can I use this to benefit myself  - no matter what it means for him!_ ' So you rob people, despite the fact that anything you could possibly take by force you could ask _mummy and daddy_ for! And THEN you have the audacity to HIDE him from us cos' you know we're gonna try and get him somewhere safe! Somewhere away from you, you manipulative little shit!"

Sarah tried to interrupt but Liz didn't let her.

"So what was it then? You wanted to feel powerful? You wanted to feel like hot shit? Well I can tell you first-hand that it don't last. You're LUCKY it was us that found you, that we were the first to show you this shit won't always go your way, cos' you'll go home with nothing more than a broken nose and your parents will coo over you, you'll probably get given ice-cream or some shit. Kid, a couple more weeks to get cocky combined with the wrong target and you'd be another corpse they pull outta the trash... So I'm gonna ask you one more time, then you can fuck off: where is he?"

Sarah was close to tears and refused to look Liz in the eye. "We… have a storage bin by the docks… I put blankets in it and he sleeps in there 'til I go to fetch him… bin 312." She pulled a little key from pocket and passed it to Liz. "I need that key back when you're done though! My dad'll be real mad at me if I lose it!"

Liz tossed the key back to the girl as she stood. "Do I look like the kinda woman that needs keys?"

Sarah shook her head, sobbing.

Liz began walking away then stopped. "Look, kid… I…" She sighed. _What are you doing…_  "Do you need me to walk you home? It's getting late."

With excellent timing, a woman a street or so away could be heard calling out for her daughter. Sarah took one last look at Liz then made a break for the voice.

"Yikes." Patty said.

"…Yeah, I may have gotten a little extreme with that one actually, Pat."

The walk to the docks took fifteen minutes, they knew all the backstreets and Patty's weapon form sticking out of Liz's jacket kept potential attackers at bay. _We're back._ They reached the right bin and Liz pulled at the lock ready to shoot it off only to realise it hadn't been properly locked anyway. _Stupid kid._ The bin was a shithole. Not just in the normal throwaway-storage-unit fashion either, it stank of sweat and rotting food.

Huddled in the corner was the boy they'd spent the best part of three weeks looking for, he faced the wall and had cocooned himself in blankets. "U- Um Sarah? I- I was thinking that when we go out tonight… When you get what you want I'll stay behind, I- I don't mind getting arrested! I- I can't do this anymore! I'm tired of hurting people! I'm scared!"

Liz bit her tongue, she'd estimated the boy was about fifteen but his voice put him closer to twelve maybe thirteen years old. The pink flash as Patty turned from gun to girl filled the bin and alerted the boy that it wasn't who he'd been expecting. He whirled around, wide-eyed and whimpering.

"Don't worry!" Patty began cheerfully rocking on her heels. "We aint gonna hurt ya! We've come to take you somewhere safe!"

The boy looked between them, unconvinced. Liz slowly took a few steps towards him then sat when she sensed him becoming frightened. "I'm Elizabeth Thompson, you can call me Liz, this is my sister: Patty."

"Heya!" Patty waved.

"We're from the DWMA, it's… like a private school for people like us, we're weapons too!"

On cue Patty transformed back into a gun and landed in Liz's outstretch palm. The boy's eyes widened in fear. Liz placed Patty on the ground and slid her towards the boy, he looked at the gun unmoving for a moment then slowly reached for it. Surprisingly, rather than remarking that it was too hot or heavy to hold, he picked Patty up. _I suppose if every one in one-thousand souls are compatible with each other we were bound to find somebody that could resonate with her eventually._ The boy experimentally pointed Patty at Liz. Liz remained smiling to show she trusted him and thus, he could trust her. _Patty can refuse to fire if he felt like pulling the trigger anyway. I'm in no danger._

"My name is Sam."

Liz's smile turned into a laugh. "Alright Sam! What do you say to a four star hotel tonight with a big, hot meal, then a flight to Nevada first thing tomorrow morning?"

Sam looked like he was expecting camera crews and the host of a prank-themed reality TV show to jump out at any moment. If the blankets so grotty dogs would turn them down and sea of empty sandwich boxes surrounding him were anything to go by, it'd certainly be a sudden jump up in quality of life. "Y- Yes please! But, what about Sarah? She said I'd get in big trouble if I ran off…"

"Aww, don't worry about her!" Patty clapped the boy on the back a tad too forcefully considering his paranoid state, and he flinched. "She thought she was some bad girl but my sis is the BADDEST girl! Liz set her straight!"

Liz grimaced "Uh… Yeah…"

They checked in, Sam ate enough to feed himself and a small family, then collapsed into bed. Over the course of the meal, Liz's probing revealed Sam's mother had died a few years after he was born, his father was a man of faith and could only devote little time to caring for his young son, the displaying of weapon abilities had been the final straw. He'd been cast onto the streets around age twelve and found by Sarah a few days later. In hindsight, Liz supposed he could have been picked up by far worse people. When Sam delved too deep into painful memories, Patty fished him back out again with jokes and lighter conversation. _We really do make a great team._

The girls could hear Sam's snoring from the next  hotel room over, Liz was filling in the mission report and Patty sat on the end of the bed, eagerly facing the room's mirror. As Liz finished the last section she took a moment to look at her younger sister's excited face and smiled. "Do you wanna call Kid then?"

Patty practically shot off the bed and bounded towards the mirror, squealing, but before she could breathe on its surface, it rippled with an incoming call.

"I swear that boy's psychic or something…" Liz said rising to join a bouncy Patty.

His image hadn't even crystallised before Patty was screaming her hellos. "KIDDDD! IT'S BEEN SO LONG! LIKE FOREVER! Did you get taller?! Did you tell Maka I said hi?! Have you done any-"

"Hey, Patty!" Kid chuckled, cutting her off before she collapsed from lack of breath. "And Liz too! you guys won't beli- Oh! Good lord, Elizabeth! What _on earth_ has happened to your face?!"

Liz brushed her fingers against the sore spot on her chin, the brick had left bloody scratches and a rather impressive bruise on her usually pristine skin. "Had a disagreement with a bit of leftover building supply, why? Is it not _aesthetically  pleasing_ enough for you? The wound's fairly central."

Patty started giggling at the jab and from the way Kid's brow furrowed, she'd gotten under his skin in less than a minute of talking to him. _Hey, that's what family's for right?_

"I'm not bothered." Kid said, clearly bothered. "You're the one that looks like you got hit with the ugly stick." He shrugged.

Patty's giggles turned into uproarious howls of laughter and she bent over, clutching her stomach. "It! It was the ugly BRICK actually! Hehehe!"

Liz pulled Patty into a headlock and started knocking on the top of her head. "Hey! Is my sister in there? Tell her she's supposed to be on my side! I can't believe you and the lead singer of a bad _My Chemical Romance_ tribute band have joined forces to drag me!"

Patty continued howling until tears streamed down her cheeks and kid's contained, clinical chuckle morphed into genuine laughter. Liz let Patty go and cracked a smile. The confrontation with Sarah had gotten a little too personal, the setting of backstreets she'd grown up in hadn't helped and thoughts of her mother began rising in Liz's head again. _Fuck her._ She thought. _This is my family. These are the people that matter._

*                           *                           *

When Liz and Patty brought a child back to Death City, the girls remained for a week or so to rest, sometimes longer if the child was especially nervous and wanted familiar faces around while they got used to the place. Afterwards, they researched leads that could turn into potential missions, most of the time they came back false, but others had them discovering kids who needed the help. This time was different. Kid had informed the girls of the rogue witch and need-to-know basis surrounding her, needless to say they were as excited as he was; as much as Liz took pride in her work there was a small part of her that would drop it completely if Kid decided to relinquish his position and become their meister full-time again. Patty was just happy to relive _the good ol' days_.

Four days after they'd taken Sam to the DWMA, Liz and Patty (this time accompanied by Kid) returned to Brooklyn. "Kinda weird that the witch was in the same place as us, dontcha think?" Patty shouted inside from the balcony of her and Liz's hotel room. The neon of businesses below reflected onto surrounding glass and gave the urban landscape an incredible wash of colour, one somewhat saturated during the daytime.

Liz unpacked her and Patty's bags whilst Kid sat at the table inside, looking over what sparse information Maba's intelligence had on The Eye. "Not so loud, Patty, if there is a connection and she was stalking you two for whatever reason then we don't want her to know we're here."

"I doubt there's a connection." Liz said. "She doesn't want to be found right? Well, there's no place on earth where you can just completely disappear like New York." Liz picked at the hem of the Jumper she was folding. _There's that bitterness again…_ "Whadda we have on this witch then, Kid?"

Kid furrowed his brow as he routed through the papers strewn across the table. "Not much… But it's better than nothing." He picked up a folder to his left and began tapping his foot, something he tended to do when stressed. "Maba promised that any witches who committed acts that could be seen as wrong by the DWMA's standards _before_ the battle on the moon would be given a blank slate, as retroactive punishment would be both hard to enforce and somewhat immoral. Apparently The Eye was sceptical about this. She's done some pretty heinous things in the past so it's possible she's gone into hiding, but Maba also said she's bitter about something and could be dangerous. We have to make sure."Kid pulled a photo from the file and slid it towards Liz, beckoning Patty inside to look at it too. "This is her."

Liz had no expectations in regards to what The Eye would look like but somehow, was surprised anyway. The first thing Liz noticed was that not only did The Eye not wear a hat like many witches chose to do, but she was bald. As far as clothes went she wore black, with the exception of a worn, white bandage that covered her eyes. Her emaciated frame was bare with the exception of what Liz would queasily call lingerie, a sleeveless cardigan that descended to her mid calf and a belt adorned with (hopefully fake) eyes.

"Look at her sick tattoos!" Patty yelled, jamming her finger into the photo.

She did indeed have tattoos. Lots. The most distinct being the upsettingly real eyes that coated only the right half of her head. _That might be why Kid was jiggling his leg…_ Liz thought about the right vs left brain theory. _Maybe she's a creative type?_ "Forget her tattoos, Pat, what's up with that chrome dome?"

Patty placed her hands on her hips. "That's not nice, sis, she could have cancer! …Hey, Kid! Can witches get cancer?"

Kid wasn't listening, he'd also stopped tapping his foot, too deeply engrossed in his reading material to think about other things. "She's bitter."

"Huh?"

Kid looked up from the file he was reading. "Maba said she was bitter, and I don't know what about, but there's a trend in those she targeted before the truce. Young women, vulnerable ones, homeless girls and girls who ran away from their families."

"But, that's normal right?" Liz's heart dropped, she'd come across people like this before. "I mean… It's not normal to attack people but if you're gonna do it, you go after people who're easy to kill and won't be missed."

"Hmm, maybe if you're human but a witch has far less to fear. These reports say the incidents were calculated, apparently she follows the girls and learns about why they're in the situations that they're in, which sounds personal to me. I guess there's some sort of standard because sometimes she'll lose interest in her target and sometimes she…" Kid's eyes narrowed as he scanned the report. "This is unfinished." He picked up a different report and skimmed it, his frown deepening. "It just cuts off! They don't say what happened to the girls!"

"But something bad happens, yeah?" Patty put the picture back into the folder, making sure Kid didn't have to look at it. "Something bad happens and she's out there somewhere, potentially huntin' down people like me an' sis."

Kid's face dropped. "Yeah…"

"Well, maybe instead of lookin' at paperwork we should be lookin' for this witch then?" Patty put her jacket on, she'd already made up her mind.

Kid didn't get up straight away. "With all the progress you two have made over the years, sometimes I forget where you came from, that this is exactly the type of thing you would have had to look out for…"

Liz snorted. "The only difference is that if she'd come for us before we met you we'd have blasted her tats off then and wouldn't be having this conversation about blasting her tats off as a trio."

Kid sighed. "You can take the girl out of the streets-"

"-But sis'll still scream directly into a girl's broken nose about Christmas presents." Patty finished.

Kid raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"Oh my God, Pat, will you drop that!"

It had begun to drizzle as they left the hotel and the sound of cars sloshing through newly forming puddles faded as the trio headed away from the main road. Liz put her hood up, having invested in a decent waterproof jacket rather than her midriff-lengthed suede one, the top she wore still exposed her stomach, mind you: if you're gonna do crunches everyday you deserve to get some stares for it.

"Are we heading anywhere in particular?" Kid asked. He'd let them take the lead since he didn't know the place very well.

"Yeah," Liz replied. "If this witch is after at-risk women I know exactly where she'll go, if she isn't then we can afford the extra time it'll take to look for her."

Patty cocked her head towards a side street and suddenly darted off.

"H- Hey! Pat!" Liz panicked as she lost sight of her sister and jogged after her, she didn't like Patty not being within reach if one of them needed to change into their weapon form. _What did she see anyway? Is The Eye here?_

Patty had stopped in front of a static food-truck, the kind that sells overpriced polystyrene cups of weak coffee, pretzels, doughnuts, 'pork' hotdogs and burgers. It was boarded up and had since become a beacon for graffiti artists. The owner could have just driven it away but Liz supposed this was cheaper.

"Well wouldya look at that!" Liz said, grinning. She turned her head to make sure Kid hadn't been left behind but jumped when she noticed him stood right next to her.

"What is it?" He asked.

"What does it look like?!" She snapped annoyed his creepy reaper stealth had frightened her. "…It's a food truck. Used to belong to this jackass named Michael. He was horrible to us, would always taunt us about being hungry - he knew we had no money to buy anything." She chuckled darkly. "Shoulda seen the look on his face when we brought him enough money to buy ourselves a feast… He knew it was stolen of course, refused to serve us, I'm kinda glad thinkin' back cos I wouldn't want him profiting from us in any way."

"He used to make doughnuts before he left for the night." Patty said. "The smell takes a really long time to go away, an' it takes extra long when you're hungry."

"Yeah…" Liz's eyes clouded over as she remembered the smell. "Fuck him. I'm glad he went bust."

"As long as you were robbing people anyway, you should have gone after him." Kid said.

Liz's smiled raising an eyebrow. "That's a bit out of character for you, Mr. Law-And-Order."

Before Kid could reply, their attention was drawn to Patty who'd began shaking the panel of a chain link fence. "Shortcut!" She chirped, twisting her fingers into the wire.

"Huh…" Liz put her hands on her hips, Patty was right; the fence blocked off an industrial estate they could cut through. She walked up to the fence and pulled at one of the clips connecting the panel to its frame. _Nope._ "Hey, Kid! Use some of that god-strength!"

"I'm not Black*Star…" Kid frowned but moved towards the fence, none-the-less. He gave the fence a quick once-over then pulled the panel out of its clips.

"Sweet!" Patty said racing through, her sister not far behind.

Kid followed, gently leaning the panel against its frame after him and looking only slightly guilty.

The estate was a vast plain of closed-down factories and wreckage; bits of broken machinery littered the tarmac like corpses on a battlefield, crab grass clawed its way out of cracks in the ground and the smell of oil mixed with faint, falling rain guided them through abandoned furniture and cars, blackened by fire.

"This place fuckin' sucks." Patty declared.

A group of teenagers appeared from around the side of a shed about forty ft away but fled at the sight of other people.

"You never told me exactly where we were heading, Liz." Kid said.

"There's a shelter the other side of this estate," She replied. "For domestic abuse victims, sex workers, homeless women… When our Mom first abandoned us we used to get an evening meal there and a place to sleep. After we realised Patty was a weapon too, we left it for people who didn't have a way of defending themselves. If what you've said about The Eye is true, it's a decent place to start."

"That place sucks more." Patty added.

Liz flinched, something in the corner of her eye had moved. She turned but the landscape was motionless and quiet. It was as if all of a sudden the world had stopped, she couldn't hear cars in the distance anymore, chatter, music and other symptoms of city life had ceased entirely. The ground lurched. "What the hell?!" Her vision began to blur, but… no, it wasn't her vision, it was the world itself. _I'm gonna be fucking sick if this keeps up._ Far to her left she felt a pop.

Kid tensed up. "Girls!"

"What?" Liz felt the fear she'd been trying to repress bubble into her soul wavelength. "What's happening?!"

Kid grabbed one each of Liz and Patty's hands, he'd felt the pop too and he knew what is was: a witch removing their soul protect. The colours of the industrial estate bled into each other like water-based paints, everything became saturated. "She's near."

Liz panicked and transformed, she felt Patty do the same. Euphoria washed over her as she felt both her sister's soul and Kid's linked together in resonance. _It's like finding a puzzle piece you've been missing for years…_ In their connected state Liz could feel happiness in Kid too, but it soon gave way to caution. Something really wasn't right. The world gave a colossal lurch, kid crossed Liz and Patty over his chest for protection, and then… everything was fine?

They were in The Death Room.

"…What?" Kid lowered the guns to by his sides. "Wait! What?" He spun; marble floors, blue dome, floating clouds, the guillotines, the mirror: they were in the death room!

"How did we get here, Kid?" Liz asked.

"I brought you guys here!"

A different kind of lurch. All of a sudden, the thousands of thoughts that had been running through their minds vanished in replace of one big thought: 'huh?!'.

"Sorry for all the drama! But it's okay now! Long time no see, huh Guys?~!"

There, next to the mirror, in space that Liz had been sure was empty moments ago stood the previous grim reaper.

"H- Holy shit!" Patty yelled. "It's Lord dad!"

"Yeah…" Liz replied, dumbfounded.

He was practically motionless, a black blob topped with a goofy mask. "Now, I'm sure you have a lot of questions about this but first I wanna say good job! Wow, that Asura sure was a tricky one, but you reigned him in! And you became a true reaper, Kid! Congrats!"

Kid was unresponsive. _Is he okay?_ Liz didn't have to poke far at his soul to get her answer. Mostly he was in shock, she supposed that was understandable; he'd thought his dad was dead, they all had. _So has he been alive all this time? Was he.. resurrected somehow? Why did he appear now? If he'd been alive then why keep it a secret? Kid's been struggling on his own._

"Dad?" He sounded very small.

"Yup! Sorry, for keeping this from you… But you've been doing such a good job in charge! I'm SO proud of you, Kid!"

"Aww!" Liz was beaming. "Ya, hear that Kid?"

Shock made way for a plethora of other emotions; bottled up anguish, a touch of confusion, fear(?), but mostly relief. "Dad!" Kid grinned, crying at the same time. He began to walk towards the figure.

"Kid." Patty's voice was firm. "Don't."

Liz tensed up, she recognised her sister slipping out of her childish persona immediately. _But why? This is the best thing to happen to us sin-_

"Kid I… I'm sorry but your dad's dead. That's not your dad."

For the first time the image of Death moved so his mask could form sadness.

_He's been ever so stoic…_

"Oh, come now! I know you must be confused but I can expla-"

_Really still, like a picture… like a photo… oh… oh God, that isn't him, is it?_

"Shut up!" Patty transformed back into a girl and stood in front of Kid. "You fucked up freak! You're gonna turn inta somebody's dead dad to trick them?! You make me sick!"

"Patty!" The agony in Kid's voice was almost unbearable.

Kid, attempted to walk around Patty, but she grabbed his shoulders, turning him to face her. "We were in Brooklyn, it doesn't make sense for us to be here! It doesn't make sense for your dad to be alive! You felt the witch's soul right before this happened remember?" She softened her voice. "Kid, I'm sorry but he's gone, there's nothing you can do to fix that, no matter how much you want it. Walking into a trap just because you want it to be true is kinda silly, y'know?" Patty's baby-blue eyes bore into Kid, hoping she'd reached him.

Kid's own eyes slipped shut and he leaned forward, letting his head fall onto Patty's shoulder. "Damnit…"

Patty hugged Kid tightly, rubbing his back in circles with enough strength to break a human's spine.

"You really hate me that much?" Death or not, his voice was convincing. Upsetting. "Were you glad when you found out I'd died? That it was your fault for linking your lines?"

Kid lifted his head, eyes wide.

"You really are a horrible child." Death bowed his head, but it wasn't death anymore; the basic shapes were still there but the colours were shifting.

Kid shook his head. "You're not my dad!" He gritted his teeth and reached out for Patty. "I'm not listening to another thing you have to say!" Patty transformed.

"Horrid boy!" The voice grew deeper as the figure twisted and grew. "Weak excuse for a God! Should have let your brother snap your neck! Should have let him eat your soul! The only decent reaper is dead and it's your fault!"

Liz found herself yelling over the growing noise. "Shut up! Shut up! You don't know anything!"

All at once the figure lurched towards them, a mass of black that rapidly expanded and shrank back into place. It was terrifying. Liz waited to be fired but Kid wasn't moving, he stood, shaking, and stared into the shifting image.

"Shoot it Kid!"

Kid bit his lip and shut his eyes, he pointed his guns forward and fired in quick-succession. Every shot hit its target and the thing screamed with his father's voice. Kid yelled. "Stop it! I know this isn't real! I know my dad is dead! Why are you still doing this!?"

The creature laughed as it was blown apart. "Because it's funny."

The world lurched. They were back in Brooklyn. _Holy fuck…_ Kid stumbled forward as his perspective righted itself. Wet tarmac, broken machinery, buildings, crab grass. He wiped his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Liz asked.

"Yeah. That was…" He swallowed, voice hoarse. "That was really unpleasant."

Liz and Patty changed back, both wrapping their arms around their meister.

"I can't be sure if it was The Eye who… uh, did that, but I know the wavelength of that witch's soul now, so if they appear again I'll- I'll be ready." The soul was no longer nearby.

Liz frowned, she'd rather that Kid talked about it than immediately change the subject but they didn't have the luxury of time, so she stepped out of the hug. "If that is who we're going after then we better get a move on, there might be people in danger."

Kid nodded.

Walking in silence, they put the industrial estate behind them and emerged into one of the wider alleyways. It was definitely an area tourists would be encouraged to stay away from; the businesses that had shut for the night were shuttered and padlocked, graffiti coated every flat surface and it stank. The only light came from a Chinese takeaway the next street over: one of two shops still open.

Liz lead them to what looked to be a set of apartments and turned to Kid, regret in her eyes. "You should probably stay out here."

Kid raised an eyebrow.

"Look… Me and Pat know you're cool, but the type of women that stay in these sorts of places are gonna get real uncomfortable with a guy coming in to have a poke around."

He nodded and sat on a nearby grit box. "I understand, I could use some time to clear my head anyway."

Patty bounded away from Liz to give Kid a quick pat on the head. "Won't be long! If the witch shows up again, scream really, REALLY loudly, kay?"

Kid smiled, tiredly. "Kay."

Liz knocked on the shelter door and almost immediately heard the shunt of the peep-door being moved aside. A pair of questioning eyes peered through and then widened in shock.

"Oh holy hell!" The shutter was slammed back in place and the girls could hear locks and dead-bolts being moved aside. "Thought I'd never see the likes of you again…" The handle turned but was apparently stuck. "Fuck… As if you've come back to a place like this…" Another, hidden lock was jostled out of place. "There we- Ah!... Too many bloody locks…"

Patty turned slowly and gave her sister _a look_ and Liz raised an eyebrow at the door as it flew open.

"Hah! Here we go!" The woman stumbled forward as the door gave way.

"Hey, Maggie." Liz said, trying to keep the amusement out of her voice.

Maggie's expression turned grizzly. "Now… What the hell are you two doing back here?" Hands on her portly hips, Maggie was maybe 4ft8 but her aura held something motherly and frightening. The twisted, old mouth was scarred and grim and her dark skin also had seen its share of war-fare. Liz had forgotten how much she admired the battered old woman. "No, no!" She put her hands up, despite having not yet received an answer. "Don't tell me anything yet, let's get inside where it's safe."

Liz guided Patty towards the shelter and sent an apologetic look back at Kid. "We won't be long, I promise."

"It's fine." Kid replied. He was so naturally pale, the girls couldn't tell if he looked sick from the incident or if it was the lighting, but his voice had regained at least a little of its confidence. "See if you can get us a lead."

Upon hearing another voice, Maggie stuck her head around the door and her unkempt eyebrows shot up. "What an odd looking boy!"

Patty laughed and began to shove Maggie through the door. "C'mon! You'll hurt his feelings."

Liz chuckled and followed-suit, shutting the door behind her and noting Kid's puzzled expression. _We won't be long, even without the threat of whatever that witch did just now: I don't want to be in this place any longer than I have to._

"Hold up!" Maggie said, barging past Patty and Liz to the door. "Gotta secure the fortress, you girls go on ahead - you know where my office is."

Liz took a hold of Patty's arm and headed deeper into the shelter, the sound of clicking locks and slamming deadbolts growing distant behind them. The shelter had seen better days, although it had always been that way. Liz couldn't imagine it had ever looked good. _They must build these kinds of places to be shitty._ The Wallpaper curled away from the walls and underneath the paint was peeling, the carpets were mottled and coming away from the floor, what few windows they passed were boarded up and the place stank of smoke. Liz smothered the tiny cravings that began to tickle in the base of her throat.

The few girls they passed stared, some passive aggressively, some scared, some with eyes so blank you'd think they weren't there at all. Thankfully, there was nobody they recognised.

"Sis," Patty whispered. "Do ya think The Eye would really come here?"

Bitter nostalgia had almost made Liz forget their objective. "It's possible, I really hope not though."

Maggie's office was a bit more plush than the rest of the shelter, but still under-par with what you'd expect from a place to live or work in, it was almost reminiscent of a rundown office from a detective noire. _This place should be in black and white._ The girls sat on a faded pink sofa, so covered in cushions they sank into it like a nest and Patty giggled as she disappeared between a large heart-shaped pillow and a sheepskin blanket. Maggie didn't take long to follow, she shut the door for some privacy and sat in an armchair opposite the girls.

"Now…" Maggie said, crossing her legs. "Before we get into whatever god-awful reason brought you back to my door-step, I wanna be brought up to speed: where on earth did you girls disappear to?" She reached into a cabinet behind her chair and pulled up a bottle of brandy, along with three tumblers.

From the clinking she heard as the brandy was retrieved, Liz summarised Maggie had a whole bar back there. She declined a drinks offer on behalf of herself and her sister as she saw the older woman was ready to pour them both a glass.

"When I stopped seeing you around, when I stopped hearing of the trouble you were getting into I thought the worst." Maggie took a decent swig of the brandy. "I said to one of the girls, one night: _y'know, those Thompsons - and God I love 'em - those Thompsons have had this coming for a while. You don't get to be strong women in a place like this, you don't get to put FEAR into the hearts of men without them wanting to strike you down_." She snorted back mucus and leant forward grinning. "So, how'd ya do it? How'd you cheat death and make something for yourselves?"

_She's obviously been drinking for a while already…_

"Well! We didn't exactly cheat death as much as we made buddies with him!" Patty exclaimed, wriggling out from between the cushions.

"We got into a pretty bad spot," Liz continued. "And that boy you saw outside? He bailed us out."

Maggie's brow almost disappeared under her unkempt, black curls. "He's a demon?"

"Not quite," Liz laughed. "He's our meister and practically our brother at this stage."

Maggie took another gulp of the brandy then set it on a, heavily-scratched, coffee table between them. "Meister… That's funny, you two always used to go on about how you _didn't need anybody else_ and _others would only drag you down_."

"Yeah… We used to say a lot of things." Liz felt her sister's eyes on her. _Or I did at least, Patty would follow me wherever I went, do whatever I said, believe whatever I told her. I'm surprised she still holds me in such high regards._ "Anyways, we might not have much time: have you noticed anything unusual happening lately?"

Maggie cocked her head. "Unusual? How so, exactly?"

"Just anything irregular; things feeling off, people going missing-"

"Being transported to a completely different place out of the blue!" Patty butted in. "Or a witch, with freaky tattoos!"

Suddenly Maggie's Jaw locked and she hunched into herself, gritting her teeth. "No."

_Liar. But why? Surely Maggie wouldn't shelter a witch?_

"Look," Liz said, her eyes boring into Maggie. "We have reason to believe that this witch might go after some of the girls here, we just want to make sure that-"

"Don't you bring any of that shit near me or my girls! They have enough to deal with!" Maggie Exploded, suddenly.

"Hey! We're trying to help!" Liz put her hands up to try and calm the old woman down but she was having none of it.

"I'm happy to know you're both still alive but if you're involved in all that supernatural mumbo-jumbo then I want you OUT! I can protect these girls from men and the cold but I can't be dealing with the likes of witches and demons!" She stood and began to chauffeur the girls out her office.

"Wait!" Liz said. "You don't understand! These girls might be in danger-"

"Then you deal with it." Maggie said. "That's your job now, right? You get rid of this shit and leave us alone!"

As they were pushed through the door to Maggie's office, they saw maybe fifteen girls crowded in the corridor trying to eavesdrop before they scattered back into various rooms like mice.

"C'mon." Liz growled grabbing Patty's wrist and dragging her to the front of the shelter.

"Don't come back 'til this is dealt with!" Maggie yelled after them. "You have the luxury of a life off the streets now, right? Then WORK for it!"

For Liz, Maggie's comment had struck a nerve. "Aww, ya know what!? You can fuck off! How are any of these girls supposed ta feel alright with you drinking yerself to death every night! Ya know what role alcohol plays in violence, ya daft old bitch!" She snarled.

Girls peered around out from behind doors at the commotion and Patty's head darted around wildly to make sure her sister hadn't upset anyone.

"How- How dare you! You stupid Harpy! You'd've ended up just like your mother were it not for your power1s That's all you have! The ability to turn into a gun and your looks! Even the daft one's better at defending herself than you are!"

Rage exploded in Liz, she turned on her heel with the intention of smacking the old woman but Patty yanked her towards the door.

"Sis, Please! Let's just go!"

The big sister instincts kicked in as Liz noticed the worry in Patty's eyes and she gave one last spiteful look at Maggie before leaving the shelter. Straight away, the clicking of locks could be heard behind them. "Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. Stupid old hag. Stupid. Stupid bitch!" Liz grit her teeth and kicked at stray stones in the alleyway. She was shaking but the adrenaline was slowly edging off. Liz sighed. "Sorry, Pat… Y'know I don't think being back in this place is good for me."

"Yeah, no shit…" Patty smiled softly but there was still a little bit of worry in her eyes.

 _When did she have to start looking out for ME?_ "Let's just go back and-" Panic. Kid was gone. The grit box where he'd been sat was bare and as Liz span on the spot, she couldn't see him anywhere in the alley. _Did the witch come back for him when he was on his own? Is he okay?! Damnit! We shouldn't have left him out here alone!_ "Shit! Kid is-"

"Right here." Kid said, calmly. He strolled out from the side alley linking to the next street over. "I know you said you were going to be quick, but I didn't realise you meant THAT quick." He smirked and Liz calmed down: he seemed to be himself again - which was good - but he was also carrying a stuffed paper bag of what smelled like Chinese food - which was even better. "I take it from the sudden spikes I felt in your soul wavelength that things didn't go great?"

"Not really…" Liz sighed.

"Well then; let's go back to the hotel, have something to eat and go over what we know so far."

***                           *                           ***

"Sounds like you really tore a strip off her." Kid said, with a tone that couldn't exactly be called approving. They'd reached the hotel just as the rain had morphed from a drizzle into a full-on storm, it was just past midnight and outside the whoops and hollers of people moving from closing bars to climaxing clubs could be heard. Inside, things felt a bit more mellow as the trio shoved their faces full of, quickly cooling, takeaway food. "I'm not sure why you thought that was necessary…"

Liz sighed. "Being back here, all these memories and reminders of what shit could have been like, it's really messing with my temper… Plus she called Patty _daft._ "

Patty giggled, spitting out bits of the last pork bun she'd shoved in her mouth, before anyone else could make a grab for it. "Ya shfould of hfeard her, Kid: she wfend WILD! An' her accfent got really stronfg."

"Hey! No it didn't!"

Patty swallowed and Kid recoiled as he saw the lump of barely chewed food bulge in her throat, but at least she wasn't talking with her mouth full anymore.

"Yeah, it did! You were all like ' _ya ya ya'"_ Patty waved her arms around as she impersonated her sister. " _YA bitch! I'll kill YA whole family!"_

"I never said that…" Liz ran a hand through her hair, self-consciously.

"Well!" Kid said, in an effort to get things back on track. "Whether or not, you've now severed ties with this woman remains to be seen, but you were fairly certain she was lying to you about not seeing anything unusual?"

Liz thought back to how defensive Maggie had become all of a sudden, violent mood-swings were not uncommon in the woman but it had seemed a bit too sudden. _It's unlike Maggie to do anything that could bring harm to the girls in her shelter._ "Yeah, I think so."

"And there's that thing that happened in the industrial estate too!" Patty said.

Kid looked away as the girls turned their eyes to him. "Yes. There is that."

"So this whole thing wasn't a wasted exercise cos' we know more than we did, when we set out!" Patty's boundless optimism did wonders to soothe her sister and meister's unvoiced disappointment.

Liz looked between them and smiled. "Yeah, you're right, Pat. Right as always."

Patty grinned and raised a hand to her head in a cheerful salute.

"I think we can gather quite a lot from that incident you brought up, actually." Kid said, using a napkin to wipe his mouth in an almost dainty manner. "As you told me when it was happening - and thank you for that, by the way - there was no possible way we could be in The Death Room or see, uh… _Him_." Kid faltered for a moment then cleared his throat and continued. "It did become apparent that this was somebody else, and if it WAS The Eye then I think I know what her magical speciality is: Illusions."

Patty made an 'Ooo' sound and leaned closer to Kid.

"Now, I'm sure you know that most witches have a sort of _motif_ , if you will, and usually that motif is centred around an animal."

"But The Eye's whole dealio was focused on… well, _eyes_." Liz said, realisation kicking in. "Damn, it's like how The Kishen's madness wavelength could make you see things, all over again."

"Exactly." Kid said. "But at least the madness wasn't sentient; if The Eye can create whatever illusion she wants, then she can create a situation that's specific to her target… As the one we experienced was tailored specifically to me, it seems…"

Patty gave Kid a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and spoke softly when he turned to look at her. "But we know to look out for it now, if anything seems off and super scary then it's probably an illusion right? Can an illusion even hurt us?"

Kid shifted, uncomfortably. "I'm not sure… We should be on our guard though just in case."

The girls nodded and Liz spoke next. "The main problem is that the people in this area don't know about the illusions, if Maggie really was lying and she's noticed The Eye nearby then we have a serious Issue."

Kid nodded. "We need to rest up then, because tomorrow we're going to go back and get her to tell us exactly what she knows.


	2. Gone

Sunlight played gently on Liz's eyelids, it wasn't unpleasant however the thought of leaving her warm hotel bed was. _I can probably get away with a couple more hours, then I'll-_ Suddenly the shrill ring of the room's phone intruded upon Liz's senses and she rolled over, burying her head under the duvet. _Probably just the front desk…_ Even doing her best to ignore the noise, Liz heard the sound of her sister throwing off her quilt and picking up the phone.

"Yeeello? ... Mornin' Kid! … Yeah okay! … Yup! … Alright, I'll wake her up, seeya in a sec!"

_Please no…_

"SIIIS! SIS, WAKE UP!"

Liz sighed and brought her hands underneath her chest, ready to push herself up when she felt a sudden weight hit the bed. "No… Patty get off."

Patty ignored her sister and clambered over the lump in the blanket anyway. "Mornin'!" She giggled, ripping back the quilt and peering inside. Her hair stuck up in odd places and Liz could see where drool had crusted in the crevices of her face, but the smile and wide, childish eyes more than made up for it.

"Hey, Pat..." Liz yawned.

An hour later, the sisters and Kid were making their way back towards the shelter. Liz wasn't entirely sure what she'd say to Maggie when she saw her, hell she wasn't even sure the old woman would open the door to them, but that was a bridge they could cross when it was reached. _We have to try._ However, much to Liz's surprise she needn't have worried at all: as the trio left the hotel they noticed Maggie stood on the opposite side of the street.

"Look, sis!" Patty yelled jabbing her finger towards the woman, "There she is!"

Maggie looked up, locking eyes with Liz as she heard the younger sister's shouting. She looked grave. As the traffic slackened, Maggie made her way across the road towards them. "I'd never consider myself one to grovel…" She said, looking towards her feet. "But… You were right… I really need your help."

Liz raised an eyebrow. _This is a pretty serious curve from yesterday… Maybe a decent hangover was what it took._ Liz looked towards Kid waiting for him to say something but was surprised to find him already looking in her direction. Then through the gentle resonance achieved by meister and weapon being close to one another, she heard his voice in her head.

" _You know her better than I do, I'm expecting you to take the lead on this investigation or at least until we have a little more info."_

Liz sighed. _Fuck. That means I have to be civil._ "Don't worry, Mags, that's why we're here in the first place." In truth she was still angry with the woman but forced a smile anyway: they wouldn't get anywhere if she couldn't put aside her pride for a few minutes. "You gonna tell us what you know about The E-"

Maggie's eyes grew wild."-Not here."

_Man, she's… Frightened… It's unnerving._

Maggie didn't offer anything else straight away. In front of the Hotel, the four of them stood stock-still, tourists and locals alike weaving around the uncomfortable group, casting occasional accusatory glances at taking up so much of the pavement. "I have things to tell you but we can't talk out in the open."

Kid softened his voice but Maggie still regarded him uneasily as he spoke. "You could come to our hotel room if you'd like?"

"It will have to do." All of a sudden she leaned in close to Liz, grasping her arm tightly as she whispered. "She's called The Eye for a reason! The bitch sees everything!"

As Maggie released her arm, Liz stumbled backwards slightly then turned towards the hotel in an effort to make it look intentional. _Crazy old coot…_ She heard the others following and the warmth of the hotel lobby greeted them like a hug. But only for a moment. For a split second, Liz could have sworn the marble tiles below her boots were melting. Her stomach dropped.

"Shit!" Kid said.

The lights flared. Suddenly everything was too bright yet too dark all at once and they felt the pop of a soul protect and then that sickening lurch once again.

"There's too many people here!"

"What's going on!" Maggie yelled, panicked. "I can't see, I can't see!"

A new voice. Raspy, like a smoker's. "I could have sworn we'd spoken about this…"

Liz couldn't make out her own hands by her sides, let alone whoever was speaking, but the voice was so loud - it's owner should have been stood right in front of her. To her left, Liz heard Maggie whimper.

"I could have sworn I told you what would happen if you consulted with the DWMA…"

"Please!" Maggie said. "You started this! I sent them away but you refused to leave us be! What else was I supposed to do?!"

"I don't care." The voice replied, jovially.

Suddenly they were in the shelter. _Something's off._ Liz could see Maggie, her sister and Kid again but nobody else. Maggie lurched up the stairs, falling into the banister in an effort to steady herself.

Liz followed. "Maggie come back!"

The woman would not be stopped, intent on pulling herself up towards her office.

Meanwhile, Kid examined the front door of the shelter; none of the latches moved, the deadbolts were stuck in place and the handle was missing all together. There was wailing from upstairs.

Liz struggled to swallow as she looked over Maggie's shoulder: in her office, bodies littered the floor and furniture. Liz vaguely recognised some of the corpses as girls she'd seen the previous day, mouths slack, some with chests torn open, others with slit necks or wrists. All missing their eyes. The plush red office sofa was now darker and wet. Maggie stumbled forward sobbing and Liz was forced out of her shocked state, she wrapped her arms around the woman's middle to stop her from progressing.

"Le'go of me!" She slapped at Liz's hands and powered into the room, dragging the younger woman along behind her.

"Maggie it's not real!" Behind her, Liz heard the clicking of Kid's heels as he ran up the stairs and her sister's stomps not too long afterwards. "It's an illusion! None of this is real!"

"Oh god!" Maggie dropped to her knees a few inches in front of the first girl and Liz was pulled down with her. "I was supposed to look after them!" Maggie shook as she held took the girl in her arms. "It's my job… I promised them…" Maggie's breathing quickened and her whole body rocked in time with her sobbing.

"H- Hey…" Liz said, rubbing Maggie's shoulder, "They're fine, this isn't real, we were just in a hotel, remember?"

Maggie wasn't listening, consumed by shock and guilt she didn't even seem aware she was being spoken to.

Liz snarled and rose upright. "Alright, bitch. Where are you?" She left Maggie's office and turned right; away from the stairs and the front door.

Kid gestured for Liz to transform as she passed him but she ignored him. "Liz…" He cautioned.

"Do you get off on messing with people or something? You're one sick fuck I can tell you that." As she walked down the landing she noticed how dark it was. Too dark, even with how cheap the fluorescent bulbs of the hostel flickered. Then the world was twisting again. _Lurch._ "What? You gonna make some scary shit for me? Bring it! I ain't interested in your cheap parlour tricks!"

"Elizabeth!" Their world was growing rapidly dim then flashing back into life in shades of sickly gray and green. Something was definitely wrong. Kid darted after his weapon but the lighting in the corridor was so bad, he could barely make out her silhouette storming ahead. He turned to call for Patty to follow only to realise she was to his right, however what he did see behind them was unnerving: white edges making up outlines of what should have been railings, paintings on walls, shelves and even the walls themselves. The illusion was undoing itself behind them as they ran. Kid was vaguely aware that he could no longer hear Maggie's crying.

"Stop!" Patty yelled, after Liz.

The corridor had ended, but not with a wall, instead hundreds of sharp-looking spikes greeted them. Patty had been looking forward as she ran and managed to slow herself in time, Kid however had about a ft of corridor left to steady himself and had to put his hands out to stop his whole body from colliding with the wall. Kid gasped as spikes pierced the flesh of his palms, he pulled them off the wall and felt searing pain as they were extracted from his hands.

"What the hell's up with that?! Sis managed to get past it! It just appeared out of nowhere!"

Blood trickled from the puncture wounds and the pain was too persistent not to be real. _So it is possible to be hurt by an illusion..._ "This is bad. Where did your sister go?"

Patty gestured towards the spike wall. "I just said! She ran through here and then the wall appeared right after her!"

"Hmm." Kid reached out with his soul perception and sure enough he felt Liz's soul; angry, doing its best to smother the large well of fear in its centre and getting steadily further away from them. Getting steadily closer to a powerful soul that Kid quickly identified as the same witch soul from earlier. His stomach dropped. "We have to catch up with her."

"Duh," Patty walked towards the spike wall and tried breaking one of them away from the regular mass. "She's gonna shit herself when she realises we aint right behind her..." The spikes held firm. As crudely created as they were they did their job.

The world lurched. The spikes began melting, leaving behind the same white outlines Kid had seen earlier. _It's like an architect's sketch…_ With the illusion's colour melted away ,the void outside was visible and there in the distance, they could just about make out the speck that was Liz. She'd stopped running, having noticed that her meister and her sister were no longer following, and instead stared out into the rapidly decaying world behind her.

"SIS!" Patty called out, cupping her hands around her mouth. "COME BACK!"

The ground gave another huge lurch, except there was no ground anymore. Kid looked down: there was nothing but void beneath the black leather of his boots and he was suddenly hit with a strong sense of vertigo. Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed Patty's arm, closing his eyes, the cuts in his hand stung as they came into contact with her jumper. The world surged forward again.

Across blank space, Liz's voice warped as it travelled. "What's happening?!" She sounded frightened. "I can't get back to you guys! What do I d-" She was cut off.

There was a noise like the grinding of metal, louder than anything they'd heard in a long time. Patty swore she couldn't breathe for a moment and then there was one final lurch. They were back in the hotel.

Patty sucked in a deep breath and swallowed hard, her legs were shaking. "Woah…"

Kid opened his eyes cautiously; the hotel's soft, yellow light wasn't as comforting as it should have been. The illusion they'd just escaped had been far stronger than the first one they'd experienced. _Almost as if The Eye's testing the waters… I don't like the thought of that one bit._ After the initial shock had worn off Kid noticed something else: the pain in his hands was gone. He raised them to his face and sure enough there was no trace of any injury, his reaper body healed quicker than a human being's but it was nowhere near that quick. _But I was definitely hurt… Is it really possible to create an illusion so convincing my nervous system believes its experiencing trauma?_

"Where's Liz?" Patty was stood in the centre of the hotel lobby looking lost. She spun on the spot a few times and peered towards the street outside then turned back to her meister. "I can't see her."

Kid's blood ran cold. He could clearly feel Patty's wavelength, Maggie was also present further down the lobby but there was no trace of Liz. _What?!_ He walked towards the waiting area, Maggie was tucked into a ball next to one of the sofas, still shaking, and drawing stares from hotel-goers, however she was on her own. Kid cast out his soul perception again; he usually had a radius that spanned about the size of Death City but this was increased when Liz or Patty were in question since he was so familiar with their wavelength. _It didn't seem likely she could have been dropped off that far away, so what? Is she still stuck in the illusion?_ Kid hadn't even considered they could be split up, he had assumed that the illusions ended and that was what brought them back to reality, but then Liz should have returned with them.

"Kid?" Patty wrung her hands in front of her, not having Liz around meant she had to get serious for a while, so in her own head she'd pretty much arrived at the same conclusion as her meister. "She's okay right?"

Kid thought about Liz barrelling towards that powerful witch soul on her own.

"We're gonna get her back, yeah?"

***                           *                           ***

All of a sudden Liz felt very alone. Across the illusionary gulf she'd managed to spot Kid and Patty but as quickly as they'd come into view, they'd disappeared again. _What the hell is going on…_ The corridor had quickly sealed itself behind her, she couldn't see the void anymore, only a solid wall and not the wall with Maggie's office and the stairs that logically should have been behind her. Liz swallowed and continued down the corridor, she was frightened but it was the only place she could go.

"Not so cocky anymore?"

Liz's eyes went wide and she gritted her teeth in an effort to stop the yelp she was dying to let out.

"Well, I'll let you in on something," The raspy, smoker's voice suited the witch's malicious tone well. "Yes: I do ' _get off on messing with people_.' I don't know why that senile bitch Maba sent you people after me, but if she's intent on labelling me as a threat then I'll make myself one!"

The walls began to shift and Liz braced herself, she had little to no way of defending herself on her own but as soon as an opening appeared she was going to make a run for it. _I'm starting to really wish I hadn't mouthed off…_

The Eye cackled as the illusion changed. "Let's see just what I can do with the right materials…" Images flashed in front of Liz quickly morphing and blocking her view; a cityscape on fire, spiders, blood in a bathtub, rabid dogs. "If I have any advice for you, girl, it's too remember exactly who you were when you walked into this…" Clowns, being trapped, the way that men get right in your face to shout, losing the people you love. "I just wanted us to be left alone." Thunder, rickety bridges, walking alone at night. Did The Eye sound upset? Snakes, not amounting to anything, pain, bats, the dark. Losing the people you love.

Pop. The corridor vanished. Liz was alone. She was in a back alley near the docks, not too far from where she and Patty had picked up Sam. _I'm… back?_ It was raining and she could hear a car blare it's horn in the distance. The place stank of piss. _Well, this is definitely New York, at least…_ She looked up and down the street, there was no sign of Kid or her sister anywhere. Liz frowned and walked towards the building to her left, it was thankfully one of a handful with windows that weren't boarded up. She breathed onto the glass and scrawled in the Death number in an attempt to contact Kid. The glass didn't even ripple.

*                           *                           *

No matter how much they explained the situation to her, Maggie would not be calmed until Kid and Patty took her back to the shelter to show her the girls weren't really dead. Only then had the woman put on a brave face and welcomed them to her office.

"We don't have time for this…" Kid muttered as he waited for Maggie to return from bolting the door.

"But we don't even know where to start looking for sis," Patty said. "She might tell us something important! Something that'll help us find her!" Patty was nervous too, she'd never been separated from her sister for too long before.

"Yeah… Let's hope so."

Maggie re-entered the office and collapsed into her desk chair. She looked exhausted. "I'll tell you everything I know, then you must promise to leave us be for good. We've suffered enough as it is."

Kid gave a curt nod.

Maggie pursed her lips and then sighed. "About a week ago one of the girls vanished, and I mean VANISHED. One moment, she and a friend of hers were making tea in the kitchen, next thing she's gone. Her cup smashed on the floor, tea everywhere, Angie nowhere to be seen. About half an hour later she reappears in the exact spot she vanished from and this I saw myself, cos I was still cleaning fucking tea off the skirting boards. Anyway, she falls to pieces, tells me she saw her mother - who I know for a fact is dead - tells me her dead mother was horrid to her for no reason."

Kid shuffled uncomfortably remembering the unpleasant exchange he'd had with the illusion equivalent of his father.

"Usually, I'd figure something like that to be a nightmare, I know how to deal with nightmares, the way these girls are, the stuff that's happened to them, we get a lot of nightmares. It was the whole teleporting thing that threw me off. I wasn't sure what to believe though, Angie told me her mother had stubbed out a cigarette on her back, she described the pain to me, told me to check, so I check and there's no mark and I'm thinking that this girl's lost the plot but then she goes missing AGAIN..."

The spikes in the illusion, Kid had hurt his hands on them but in reality there was nothing wrong.

"She's not come back." Maggie took in a shaky breath. "The day after she disappeared, she went again and she's not come back. Two days ago another girl, Carol, vanished and we've not heard anything from her either." Maggie paused to swallow, she obviously cared deeply for the girls under her watch.

_So is The Eye keeping these girls? What does she do with them? Is Liz the same place that they are? Is she okay?_

"The night that Carol disappeared I was alone in my office, I was praying. It's all very well telling the girls not to worry but they're not stupid; they can see that I'm scared, they know there's no way I can protect them from something invisible, something that can just pluck them from the air whenever it feels like it. So I feel powerless and I'm praying, and I say out loud _leave them alone._ I say _They've been through enough, leave them alone._ And I hear a voice in response say _Why should I?_ "

"The same voice we heard before we entered the illusion?" Kid asked.

"The very same." Maggie nodded. "So at this point I shit myself but I also recognise that the voice has reached out to me, she could have just ignored me and carried on taking my girls but now I have a chance to reason with her. So I explain that they've suffered and she cuts me off. I immediately get the sense that she's not a compassionate person so I change my approach: I tell her I'll do anything she wants. She scoffs at me but tells me that the DWMA are coming, she tells me to send them away and that if I do she won't take anymore of my girls so I agree." Maggie turned towards Patty "Now, I didn't realise yourself and your sister were with the DWMA otherwise I wouldn't have opened the door to you, but I did and once you explained I kicked you out, which you know."

Patty nodded.

"But that night I couldn't sleep, I thought about you two being able to help, The Eye never returned the girls she stole so I thought that if I found you again you could bring them back! I thought that The Eye wouldn't be watching me 24/7 so I went to find you and then… Well you know what happened next… Will your sister be okay until you can find her?"

Kid frowned, he wanted to say yes but Liz couldn't fight like he or Patty could and she was easily frightened. _If I'm being realistic then-_

"Of course she will!"

Kid turned to Patty, who was grinning.

"Sis is the strongest person I know!"

Maggie smiled, it was only a small smile but she seemed to have gained at least a little bit of hope.

The atmosphere was abruptly broken by a rapid knock at the door. "Mrs Maggie! It happened again!" The door swung open and a mousey looking girl with long, dark hair and glasses stumbled inside, her eyes grew wide as she noticed the visitors and she brought her hands to her mouth in apology.

"It's alright, sweet," Maggie said, in a soothing voice they hadn't heard her use before. "Tell me what's wrong."

The girl's large eyes darted between the sofa where Kid and Patty were sat and Maggie, then she thrust her arms down by her sides and bowed her head. "Rydal vanished, miss! She was in our bedroom and she just disappeared!"

The air grew tense. Maggie's lips were set in a thin line and she took a deep breath. "Thank you, sweet, I'll be through now."

The mousey girl nodded and gave Kid and Patty one last look over before disappearing out into the hall.

Meanwhile, Maggie rose from her desk and rubbed her temples. "Dear lord it's all gone to shit…" She cleared her throat and regarded Patty and Kid critically. "Go, find your sister, and bring back my girls: Angie, Carol and now Rydal too." She strode in the direction the mousey girl had gone but paused in the doorway to her office. "I've gambled with their lives and I have no right to say this but… don't make me regret it please."

*                           *                           *

It had gotten rapidly dark as Liz made her way towards the hotel and she was becoming disoriented. It hadn't taken her this long to get back last time, had it? But the more she walked, the less she found she knew where she was going. Her head was foggy. _Don't I know this place?_ It was as if the streets were shifting underneath her feet, joining alleyways and roads they shouldn't, to keep her moving in a big circle. _Wait, where was I even going in the first place?_ So, so foggy. She paused for a moment, leaning against the current alley's chain-link fence. _What am I doing here?_ Her head hurt.

Liz took a deep breath and looked out, the few people she could see didn’t look right; they all walked the same and didn't make sound as they moved, like background characters, puppets, cardboard cut-outs of a crowd in a play, only there because the lack of people would have stuck out more than an unrealistic portrayal. _God, I'm still in the illusion, aren't I?_ As quickly as the thought arrived it was swept aside. _Wait, what illusion? What am I on about?_ Somebody was rifling through Liz's thoughts and memories, putting them in just the right order to make the illusion as believable as possible and she was struggling to fight it off.

 _Just focus on what you can feel._ Liz closed her eyes. The rain that clung to the fence seeping into her jeans, soreness in her feet from all the running, her own sweat. _Wait, why was I running?_ There was that fog again. She pushed away from the fence and continued, noticing that as she looked at people they became more realiistic, like somebody was putting more effort into them as they were being noticed. _Wasn't… Wasn't I supposed to meet up with somebody?_ That was when her head hurt the most, when she tried thinking about those people she'd been so desperate to find a few minutes ago. _There were two weren't there? Or was it more? A girl… My… My sister? Do I have a sister?_ The pulsing in her temples grew, Liz felt like she might be sick. _Who was the other one?_

Out of the fog in her mind, and in front of Liz, appeared the shelter. Better lit than any of the other buildings nearby, realistic and smack bang in the middle of the - previously empty, Liz was sure - street, it stuck out like a sore thumb. _Well I suppose that must be where I was heading._ Liz walked towards it and the door swung open like she was expected.

"You know you shouldn't be walking around on your own." Maggie growled, shutting the door behind Liz.

Recollection rose up in Liz's mind. Of course! She lived here, she always had, Maggie was an old friend of hers!

"Well? What were you doing?" Maggie crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

Liz noted that she looked a lot younger, the wrinkles weren't as defined, her hair was longer and her posture wasn't quite so bent over. _Younger than what? What am I comparing her too?_ Liz shook off the beginnings of another migraine: if not thinking about the gaps in her head was what it took to stave off the pain then so be it. "I… don't know."

"You don't know?! Well, in future if you're gonna wander off without telling anybody then the least you can do is have a good reason!" Maggie sighed and started up the stairs. "Lock up behind yourself please, I'm busy."

Liz supposed that was fair enough. She secured each of the deadbolts as if it was something she did everyday then moved to her room; although she couldn't remember what it was, she knew she'd done a lot of work that day and needed to rest.

*                           *                           *

At the hotel, Kid paced the length of his room. Patty was at the table looking through the notes Maba had sent. With the knowledge that The Eye specialised in illusions, certain points made more sense but they still didn't have much to go off.

"I'm calling Maba." Kid had stopped in front of the hotel's vanity and was glaring at his own reflection.

"Do you think she knows more than what we've already got?" Patty wasn't sure what to think of Maba; she couldn't understand the witch but her meister seemed to trust her, which was good enough in her books.

"I don't know," Kid muttered as he activated the mirror. "The more I think about it, the more I realise the way this mission was presented was very strange; the need to know basis, the lack of intel, and I mean The Eye can't have been the only witch to drop off the map after Asura's defeat, right? Why is finding her so important?"

The mirror's surface clouded over and it began chiming as a connection was established.

Kid sighed. "At the very least I can let Maba know that I'm treating The Eye as a hostile enemy until we make sure that Liz is okay."

Patty hummed, it was inconceivable to her that Liz would be anything less than okay: if returning to Brooklyn had shown her anything, it was that her sister still had the fire burning in her soul that she'd developed growing up.

The sharp tone of the mirror striking resonance with the one in the Death Room pierced the air, a few moments later Spirit's sleepy form appeared. "Hey, Kid." He yawned. "How are things going?"

"Bad."

"Huh? Wh-"

"Can you redirect the call to the witch realm, please?"

Spirit shrugged and pressed his finger to the mirror on his end. "Up to my ears in paperwork YOU'VE abandoned and I don't even get a Hi Spirit! How are you doing?"

"Hi Spirit! How are you doing?!" Kid grinned especially wide, showing off sharp teeth. "Patch me to Maba now."

Just as his image faded Spirit recoiled. "Alright, it's important I get it…"

The mirror started chiming again.

"C'mon Kid, he doesn't know sis is missing."

Kid sighed. "I'm stressed."

"You're always stressed, dummy."

Kid grabbed a chair from the table and spun it to face the vanity, sinking into it. "Medusa, Crona, Asura's revival, arachnophobia, the moon: all of that took place within just over eighteen months, I think everyone was overwhelmed… And then it all just stopped. Suddenly I'm a high school headmaster - granted, the DWMA is a very special school - but I'd gotten so used to the fight." He ran his hands through his hair. "Of course I'm glad things are safer now and I don't have to worry about my students being picked off by clowns or something but sometimes I'd miss just being a meister, y'know?"

Patty nodded, she knew exactly what he meant. Sometimes when she and Liz had sent a child back to Death City and they'd stayed awake too long, celebrating, they had the exact same conversation. _Is this all that's left?_ Out of necessity they'd been trained into child soldiers and now that the war was over they weren't quite sure how to function as civilians. _Do we just sit around doing nothing until we die?_

"I was ecstatic when Maba offered us this mission but I'd forgotten how many times we came a little too close to disaster… There's no reason that Liz should be in danger right now. I didn't think about you two, I'm sorry."

Patty scoffed. "Oh my god, shut up!"

Kid looked towards Patty, surprised.

"We wouldn't have come if we didn't want to! You can be such a drama queen sometimes, Kid! Liz is gonna be fine, we're gonna kick some witch butt and then go get ice cream or something."

Kid chuckled, softly. "I'd like that."

At that moment the mirror connected once again and Maba's bulky silhouette filled the frame. "Nyamu! [Ah! The young reaper! I was wondering when I'd hear from you, is everything all wrapped up then?]"

Kid swallowed. _She sure has a lot of faith in me…_ "Er, not exactly… Things have gone quite poorly, actually: I've lost one of my weapons. I was hoping you could tell me a bit more about The Eye, Maba-Sama."

Maba's one eye became sympathetic as she spoke. "Oh that's a shame, I wish I could tell you more but unfortunately I don't know anything else!"

 _Bullshit. Come on Maba, why are you lying to me?_ "Well, how about I tell you what I've discovered so far and you see if you can't think of anything I can do to help find Liz and The Eye."

Maba nodded.

"You know how The Eye creates illusions?"

Maba nodded again, seemingly confident.

"Well, that's funny because you mentioned nothing about illusionary magic in her files so obviously you do know more than you're letting on."

Maba blinked.

Kid raised an eyebrow and cocked his head.

She was silent for an uncomfortably long amount of time, looked around wherever she was in the witch realm and then cleared her throat. "[I'm sorry, dear, I must have dozed off. Did you say something?]"

Kid forced back a growl, she wasn't taking him seriously. "Look: I'm not an idiot. The Eye's illusions pluck people from reality, you specialise in spacial magic, most of which was stored in your left _EYE_ before Free stole it, she's called 'The Eye' there's obviously something bigger going on here, and personally? I don't care. That's your business. But Liz is caught up in all this now and if she gets hurt because of your negligence then we're gonna have a serious issue."

Maba scowled. "[Don't take that tone with me, child…]"

"Why not?! If catching The Eye is that important to you then you could at least be helpful! I don't think I'm being unreasonable here, there are people in danger!"

Patty looked from her meister to the mirror, as a human being she couldn't understand what Maba was saying but she could tell things were getting tense.

Kid rose from his seat. "I've been nothing but respectful to you, I've accepted unfair deals with the witch realm to build relations, I've pardoned heinous crimes that have me _struggling to sleep_ , and yet you still don't treat me with respect!" He slammed his hands on the surface of the vanity and pressed his face close to the mirror. "I'm trying my best! I know the DWMA has done terrible things to your kind but why should I be continually punished for that? What is it? Do you view me as a pushover?"

Maba said nothing. She'd tilted her head forward so her hat obscured what little of her face could be seen.

Kid stood up straight and cleared his throat, he looked suddenly very regal. "This is my promise to you: if we don't find Liz I'll make my way into your world and rip your head off, and no treaty or armed guard would stop me. Do you understand, _witch_?"

Patty's mouth hung open, the way that Kid had said _witch_ held a poisonous undertone she hadn't heard since before Asura's defeat. _Are you kidding me? We have enough to deal with right now without restarting the war!_ She was waiting for the angry _Nyamu_ that would signal she'd made Kid her enemy.

 But Maba laughed and not in a malicious way either."[You become more like your father each time I speak to you!]" She reached into her robe and pulled out a folder. "[You've made your point, reaper, I shall excuse your threat on this occasion as I feel it was well founded, but I would watch your tongue in future…]" The surface of the mirror rippled as Maba made contact with it and she passed the folder through its surface to Kid. "[Find The Eye, neutralise her and tell nobody what you learn.]" With that, the grandmother of witches bowed and closed the connection.

Kid looked down at the folder, blankly. "Well that went better than I expected…" _Witches are naturally chaotic beings, perhaps me showing that aggression was actually what Maba needed…_ He turned the folder over and emptied its contents on the table. _After all, she only agreed to help us on the moon once I broke my bonds and said I could kill every witch in that courtroom…_

"She's weird." Patty said, spreading the documents out across the table's surface.

"Tell me about it…"

*                           *                           *

Liz lived in the shelter. She always had done since she was small and she probably always would. Other girls regained confidence through counselling, they healed somewhat and left the roost to find their places in the world. Liz had found hers and it was in the shelter. She was a friend to anyone who entered, she helped thwart nightmares and provided a shoulder to cry on for those who needed it. Her and Maggie made their little section of the world better.

As the kettle boiled, Liz hummed and swayed around the kitchen. She felt oddly at peace, like she'd been tranquilized and every little thing she had to worry about had been locked away in a part of her soul that she couldn't access. Plates were set, the food was almost done and now all she had to do was brew the tea. Simple really. She picked at the polish on her nails and smiled at the girl who entered the kitchen. "Hi, everything will be ready in about five minutes."

The girl didn't say anything: she glared at Liz like she was trying to decipher a code.

Liz's smile faded. "Is something the matter…" For a minute, she had trouble recalling the girl's name, then it was thrust to the front of her mind like somebody was sorting her thoughts for her. "Angie?"

The girl slinked towards her as if she was frightened Liz would vanish, at a ft away she stopped and took a deep breath. "You're real, aren't you?"

Liz softened her expression sympathetically; trauma could do terrible things to people and the girl's remark was normal for somebody who'd suffered abuse, perhaps her grasp on reality was slipping.

Angie stumbled closer, eyes wide. "She- She's trying to plant memories in my head! To make me think that I've known you since I c- came here! But you're new! You're real like me, I know it!"

In a gentle motion, Liz brought her fingers to the girl's arm and when she didn't recoil, grasped her shoulder in a fond way. "Who's trying to change your memories, sweet?" She'd picked up the phrase from working alongside Maggie the same way she'd learnt not to call the girls foolish for saying such strange things.

"The witch!"

Pain. Blinding white behind her eyes. Liz fell back against the countertop and covered her eyes. Suddenly, the shrieking of the kettle was too loud, she groaned. _Fuck!_ Cluster headaches, she'd always had them but they came in sudden waves that were hard to predict.

"Fight it! She's messing with her head! She's making you forget who you are!"

So loud! The girl was so loud! _Witch?_ Liz found herself screaming, telling Angie to shut up. _Witches aren't real. What are witches? Kishen? Grim Reapers? Weapons? A little girl that can turn into a gun? What a crazy concept._ The pain was unbearable.

"Fight! It!"

Liz struck out at the noise. The pain subsided.

Angie had somehow managed to recede into the corner of the kitchen. She was shaking.

Suddenly there was a vice-like grip on Liz's arm and she was hoisted upright from where she'd shrank into the cracked tiles. She looked up her arm and into Maggie's furious face. Liz's stomach dropped as she felt the sting in her fingers from where she'd hit Angie, she looked back towards the corner of the room but the girl had vanished.

"What. The fuck. Was that?" Maggie hissed.

Part of Liz wished she'd have screamed at her instead but the cold anger was one-thousand times worse.

Maggie's eyebrows shot up unexpectedly and then Liz felt a wetness pool on her top lip. She raised her hand to her face then pulled it away again: blood, she had a nosebleed.

"Headaches." Maggie sighed. "You're a fucking dumbass sometimes, Liz."

Liz furrowed her brow at the comment. _It's not my fault…_

"Can't even chew you out, you're fuckin' sick after all… with the blood an' everything it might even be a head tumour..."

"Just my luck." As Liz spoke, drops of blood flicked off her lip and onto the countertop, she searched for paper towels.

"You sure just made my job harder with that kid though…"

Liz winced as the headache returned. _Kid. Kid?_ She let her head fall against one of the cupboards. _Something stripy… Someone stripy? A friend? My brother?_

"Jeeze! Look at you, woman! Go to bed, you're obviously out of it this evening!"

The spots in front of her eyes were clearing, Liz took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah… I think I'll do just that." She left the kitchen and ambled towards her room, the headaches weren't so bad when she didn't try to think. Girls milled around in the corridor waiting for dinner to be ready, Liz was surprised they weren't staring at her: as Angie ran away she must have told people what happened. Although, she'd never actually seen Angie leave, it was as if she'd quite literally vanished. Another blip of pain caught Liz off guard. She moaned and fell against the wall.

"Are you alright, dear?"

Liz breathed deeply to steady herself. "I'm fine, thank you." As she finished speaking she felt a hand rubbing her back in gentle motions. The headache subsided and Liz looked up, laughing grimly. "Look at me, I'm supposed to be looking after you guys."

The face that greeted Liz smiled benignly in response.

 _She's beautiful…_  Liz opened her mouth slightly in awe.

The girl, no, the woman was a fair bit older than the shelter's other residents, and yes she was beautiful. Soft eyes smiled at Liz in time with cupid's bow lips and her sculpted face was framed by curly golden hair. "Don't worry about it," She said in a voice Liz appreciated more when not swamped with pain. "I'm gonna have to learn how to look after somebody sooner or later!" The woman placed a hand on her swollen stomach.

_She's pregnant, must be about three or four months along._

"I don't think I've actually seen you around before, you must be Elizabeth, right?"

Liz nodded, aware she wasn't really making the best first impression.

"Well I'm Lydia, hopefully I won't be here too long - I know there are other people out there who could use the sanctuary more than myself, but I do hope to see you around in the meantime."

She wanted to say that nobody was ever unwelcome if they needed help but Lydia was already gliding towards the kitchen. Liz was struck with a sudden, unsettling sense of nostalgia. She continued towards her room and desperately tried to chase the train of thought she'd been having before the headache. Something about a girl running away? Had something happened in the kitchen? Impossible, she had been the only one in there. The name Angie made its way into her head but Liz had no idea why: there was nobody at the shelter by that name.

*                           *                           *

Kid flinched as he was woken by a sharp knocking at the door. He raised his head wearily from the table. _Table? …Oh …Right._ He'd finished going through the completed file Maba had given him at about 5:27 AM and started feverishly sketching out things he'd learned into a list of useful notes, and then those notes into a rough plan of action. Kid remembered Patty going to her room a little after 1 AM and the sun coming up but he didn't remember falling asleep. He'd drooled on Maba's file. _I hope she doesn't want that back._ The knocking resumed and Kid shambled towards the door massaging a kink in his neck that had righted itself by the time he'd reached it. If only his fatigue could be solved so easily but no, grim reaper or not he still had basic needs.

Behind the door was Patty with a paper bag in her arms, the smell of something doughy and cinnamon-infused accompanied her as she waltzed into the room. "Mornin', Kid! Did ya get anymore work done last night?" Her usual chipper tone almost made it seem like nothing was wrong but as Patty placed the bag on the table and turned back towards Kid, he noticed the beginnings of dark circles forming under her eyes. She'd had trouble sleeping without Liz close by.

"A fair bit, actually." He walked towards the table to sweep his notebook into his bag and Patty handed him a Danish pastry. "In fact, give me fifteen minutes to grab a shower and we'll set off to find your sister."

Patty's mouth split to form a little "o" and then transformed into a wide grin. "Fuck yeah!"

Kid smiled in return but couldn't help but be worried: Maba's second file had detailed exactly what happened to the girls taken by The Eye and it wasn't good.

A short while later they were back on the industrial estate. Patty had perched on the bonnet of a dilapidated car and was flicking through Kid's notebook. "So we're looking for a door?"

"Yes, something like that." He was looking for something that was inconspicuous but out of place all the same, The Eye didn't want to be found so she'd disguise the entrance of her illusion to fit in with the environment. "The file said that The Eye's magic is actually more similar to Maba's spacial magic than I'd originally thought; these illusions are actually little pockets separate from our world that she can control, however they still have to be connected to this reality."

"So we wanna get in to go find Sis." Patty jumped off the car.

Kid hummed in response not really paying attention. _I can't begin to imagine how much magic it must take to create a whole other world like that, and that's not even touching on the mind games mentioned in her notes…_

"Couldn't we just kill The Eye? If she's the one in charge of the illusions won't they just fade?" She touched the car's bonnet gingerly with her boot.

"Yes, but she knows that. I imagine she'll be hidden deep inside the illusion somewhere for her own protection."

"Anti-social, huh? Alright! Let's go then!" Patty kicked the car and the bonnet sprung open.

As it did, Kid felt an increase in the low levels of leftover wavelength he'd traced to the industrial estate, and sure enough when he looked in the car he saw a doorway within it. "This is our door alright…" At first glance, the space where the car's engine should have been appeared to hold a few inches of water, but the water was black and held no reflections - not too unlike a mirror part-way through connecting a call. It hummed with magical energy. "How did you manage to figure that out so quickly?" Kid said, looking at Patty in awe.

She shrugged. "It's where I'd put a magic gateway."

"Right…"Kid sighed and turned back to the door. _I have no idea what we're about to wander into…_ "Stick close to me, understand?"

"Duh!" Patty said. "When we find Sis, I'm gonna lay into her for turning you into such a wuss! It's like The Book Of Eibon all over again but the other way around!

"Hey, this is serious!"

Patty groaned. "Yeah, I know but you bringing down the mood ain't getting her back any quicker."

"Let's just get on with this." Kid grabbed Patty's wrist and touched the water.

He'd been expecting to have to climb into the bonnet and fall through into the illusion but as soon as he touched it's surface an otherworldly force dragged him into the water. Patty yelped as she was pulled along with him and then they vanished into the unknown.

***                           *                           ***

The talks were voluntary, but available to anyone whenever. Sometimes Liz cooked, sometimes Maggie, occasionally a shelter resident would volunteer. The talks were often uncomfortable for everyone involved.

Liz's bedroom was on the ground floor, she hadn't met a single person in the shelter who'd felt comfortable sleeping so close to the front door, so she was always alone no matter how crowded it got. Liz put the magazine down when she heard a knock at her door. Stretching on the way, she jumped from her bed to answer it.

As the door swung open, it revealed Lydia. "I hope you're not busy?"

"Who me?" Liz grinned. "Nah, I've not got much on." She stepped aside to let Lydia enter. "What's up?"

Lydia twirled slowly taking in every aspect of the room; the regular bedrooms in the shelter weren't quite as dingy as you'd expect, but as a permanent resident, Liz's room held a more comfortable, personal aura.

A cosy level of light was achieved through strings of fairy lights wrapped around the bedposts, there were posters, paintings and news articles plastering the walls, colourful throws swathed any available flat surface and there were cards and drawings everywhere from previous residents of the shelter. She kept everything thank you note she got so the dark days weren't quite so dark.

"This is a lovely room, Elizabeth." Lydia perched on the edge of the bed, following Liz's gesture. "I have no idea how you manage to keep it so clean."

"I don't," Liz said, lifting the edge of the duvet and showing all the clothes that had been shoved underneath. "and you can call me Liz."

Lydia smiled but the corner of her mouth twitched slightly, she was nervous. "I want to talk to you about something, I know I should be dealing with my problems myself: after all I'm older than you are! But I'm struggling."

"Hey now, c'mon…" Liz sat next to Lydia and put an arm around her. "You don't need to worry, it's why I'm here! Now what's up?"

Lydia looked at her feet and raised a hand to her stomach. "The father of my child, he's…" She sighed, swallowed and restarted. "I used to be a sex worker, well, I still am but the pregnancy makes that _difficult_ which is why I'm here for the time being…" She looked towards Liz to check she hadn't put her off.

Liz wasn't bothered, she understood it was a necessity for some people, she'd made a lot of friends who sold their services as a means to survive and she was thankful she hadn't ended up in a similar position.

"The father of my child, he is a… committed customer of mine. When he found out about the child I expected rage, dismissal, the normal reactions but he was… excited? He expressed a real, genuine desire to have this child, and to be with me! He wanted me to be his wife!" Lydia began talking faster, her eyes clouded over with a mixture of sadness and longing. "He said he just needed a few months to get things ready, to make a home for us and then I could go live with him, I wouldn't ever have to be a part of this awful trade again. I could start the family I always dreamed of when I was little." She exhaled and her eyes slipped shut. "So I decided to keep the child."

When Lydia didn't begin talking right away, Liz didn't rush her. _She's trying not to cry._ Liz thought about saying she didn't have to be brave, but sometimes those kind of words made things worse not better.

"As you can imagine, things didn't go to plan otherwise I wouldn't be here… I don't have the money to raise a baby and now I can't work. All I can think about is how stupid I was to trust that man! I let my wants cloud my judgement; of course he wouldn't provide for me, I'm a prostitute. Every man wants dirty sex with somebody who knows what they're doing but to marry? No, they want the clean _girl next door_. The worst part is that up until he rejected me and I came here, he had sex with me constantly! For free! I'm beginning to think that was his plan in the first place and now I'm option-less." Lydia sucked in a depth breath and composed herself. "I just want to know if I was naïve for believing him." She looked at Liz. "Was I wrong?"

"No." Liz curled her toes against the ratty carpet below, she was angry. "You should never regret trusting someone."

Lydia went to say something in her disbelief but was cut off.

"If you give somebody your trust and they lead you to believe that they're a good person through LIES and then they betray you then that's on them. THEY'RE the ones in the wrong, so don't you regret it because you made the best decision for you, he just didn't come through on his part and that makes him the lowest kinda scum there is." _I've heard this kind of story too many times before._ "Don’t you regret what you did, there's no shame in being a kind and trusting person." Liz winced at the beginning of a headache. _I've had this conversation before… I have a very dear friend who people try to take advantage of because of her forgiving nature._ Liz screwed her eyes shut as she tried to remember. _Something to do with flowers? Is her name a flower? Lilly? Violet? Rose? No… that can't be right…_

Lydia looked back down at her feet and was silent for a moment. "That's easier said than done…"

Liz opened her eyes as the pain faded and was surprised to see her guest smiling softly.

"I did get something out of it though." Ever so slowly, Lydia reached across and took Liz's hand guiding it to her stomach. "I can't believe I ever considered getting rid of this child. I've always stumbled through life wondering if I was making the right choice but right now I've never been more sure of anything: I want to have this baby, even if they grow up fatherless."

Liz became agitated as Lydia pressed her hand to her stomach: there was something about the thought of motherhood she found inherently terrifying and although Lydia was not the first person in the shelter to be pregnant, she was the first one to interact with Liz in this way. Liz didn't know what she'd been expecting, in the movies this would be the part where the baby kicked and she felt a bond but the baby wasn't kicking. Lydia's  stomach was firm but warm. "Oh…"

"I know it's foolish and… maybe even selfish, after all this child isn't going to get the best head start in life, but I'm excited to meet them! Heh… It's too late now anyway, I only have a few months to go." Lydia smiled sadly and let go of Liz's hand.

As Liz pulled her hand away she looked down at her palm, amazed at how close it had just been to the beginnings of a soul. "I'm gonna do everything I can to help you."

Lydia opened her mouth in surprise.

"You hold on to that excitement and let me handle the rest: everything's gonna turn out okay. I promise."

Maggie had been glad for the help when Liz decided to stay at the shelter permanently, but at the same time she was awfully cautious of how quickly Liz could get attached and grow protective of the girls. As far as Liz could remember she was an only child: she had no family at all but for some reason she felt the need to watch out for others, almost as if she had a big sister instinct that even the most powerful magic couldn't smother completely.


	3. Personal Growth

The illusion turned on like a light bulb around Kid and Patty; one moment they were in the dark, unable to see or feel anything and the next, the world around them was rushing to make sense of itself. It started off with the same white architect's lines showing where objects and walls should be, then they were filled with colour and took on a realistic substance. They appeared to be in a small, fairly dirty bathroom.

"Freaky…" Patty said, brushing her fingers against one of the walls.

Kid walked up to the bathroom mirror, it was cracked in the top corner but enough of it remained to be functional. He pressed his finger to its surface but nothing happened. "We're cut off from our world alright…" He cast out his soul perception like a net and widened his eyes as he was hit with information. The illusion seemed to function like a Russian doll: there were layers to it, a was soul trapped in each layer and as the illusion deepened he found it harder to sense them. Patty's chirpy soul was strong next to him, he felt three souls he didn't recognise - one not too far away and the other two on a different level - and finally he felt Liz's soul faintly in the outermost layer. "Got her."

"Yes!" Patty jumped on the spot and pumped her fist in the air.

Kid was washed with relief to find out she was alive but as he sensed her new problems arose; for one her wavelength was different. A person's wavelength can change slightly depending on their emotions but it felt more like personal growth, like she'd been through a lifetime's worth of experiences since they'd last seen her. _Like who she is, is being rewritten…_ Secondly, Kid found it hard to sense her soul at all due to the powerful aura resonating from a witch's soul at the very centre of the illusion. _A smug, calm wavelength._ "Come on, The Eye doesn't know we're here yet and things are going to get more difficult the moment she finds out."

There was no sound even as they walked, The Eye obviously prioritised the visuals but as the part of the illusion Kid and Patty were in was supposedly not in use, it didn't have the same amount of polish as the other illusions they'd been in. Even as the furniture took form it still looked like part of a child's drawing. Gateways were more common than they'd anticipated: as they'd arrived in the illusion one of the only things to be pre-rendered was a bathtub full of water. The same kind of water they'd found in the bonnet of the car on the industrial estate, and upon leaving the room they saw even more doors; a full-length black mirror, empty cupboard, fireplace and some that just appeared to be rips in the air.

"So these all lead back out, then?" Patty had grabbed Kid's arm and held it as they walked so they wouldn't be separated. They were in some sort of _Addams Family_ -esk house and it was giving her the creeps.

"I think so. At least when we find Liz we know it shouldn't be too hard to get away again."

Suddenly they heard a voice. "You okay, Angie? You look like a mess!" It wasn't The Eye, in fact the voice didn't sound human at all - it was too slow and garbled, like a cassette being played in a dying tape desk.

After a lack of any sound at all, the horrid voice caused Patty to gasp and she felt Kid flinch also.

"YOu loOk like a MEss!"

The house was righting itself to a higher standard, Kid's boots now clicked as he walked and Patty could smell cotton candy.

"You okay, Angie? You look like a mess!" The voice was improving too, it sounded human now, male, a teenager, malicious. It was accompanied by similarly cruel laughter from a group of girls.

"Kid look!" Patty pointed towards the edge of the room.

There in the corner was a group of people, at least they looked like people, but they were empty.

Kid's stomach dropped as he tried to figure out what type of magic could remove a poor person's soul and how they managed to function. _They must be part of the illusion_. "Incredible…" He walked towards the group to get a better look.

They weren't perfect; they looked and sounded like real people but they were too stationary, their lips didn't quite sync up when they spoke and they had no souls. _Of course only a meister with soul perception would be able to tell that._ Plus they seemed to be interacting with a person who wasn't there.

"You okay, Angie? You look like a mess!" The leader of the group repeated, pointing to a spot on the ground where Kid supposed Angie was meant to be.

"Kid…" Patty whispered practically shrinking into his side. "Who is he talking to, why are they here?"

"Don't worry they're not real, I think they're part of the illusion too."

"Ugh! That's so creepy! So they're like puppets then? As if the haunted house setting isn't bad enough!"

At first Kid thought Patty was making a jab at the house's interior but then he realised she was right, as he'd been analysing the puppets, the illusion had achieved prime reality around them and they were indeed in a carnival-styled ghost house. The paintings on the walls were the kind that displayed two different images depending on where you looked at them, there was cliché 'spooky' music being played in the background and the sound of children yelling could be heard faintly. 

"I think she'd pissed herself!" One of the puppet girls laughed, staring into the spot on the floor her puppet boyfriend had previously pointed too. There was a moment of silence, like the puppet was expecting another person's dialogue, and then she spoke again to the ground. "Oh you're so full of shit, Angie! This was your stupid fucking idea!" Now enraged, the puppet girl threw her drink at the spot and it bounced off the air where a person should have been crumpled.

"I guess The Eye's magic has some limits, her play's missing a character…" Kid said.

"Yeah but didn't Maggie say one of the girls who went missing from the shelter was called Angie?" Patty let go of Kid's arm and pointed towards where the puppets were facing. "Maybe this is her bad dream! Maybe this is what illusion The Eye came up with to freak her out! There's no puppet cos she's supposed to be there!"

Kid raised a finger to his chin in thought. _It makes sense, especially with what happens to her victims…_ "But then where is she? Why is the illusion going on without he-"

 **Pop.** The closest soul to them vanished. The puppets were the first to disappear and then around them the illusion began decaying.

"Oh no."

"What?" Patty asked re-clinging to Kid as the air changed.

With the walls melting, boundaries withered and it became far easier for Kid and Patty to make their ways towards where Kid had last felt the soul. As they walked, the illusion became construction lines once again but even they were fading, Patty made the mistake of looking over her shoulder and noticed the same void that had separated them from Liz creeping up behind. Patty's grip on her meister's arm tightened. Soon they reached a door, the paint was flaking and a dull gray  - not the white it was presumably supposed to be - but it was one of the last remaining parts of the illusion to hold colour and substance so Kid twisted the handle and pushed forward.

"Fuck."

She was dead. The door opened into a different bathroom to the one they'd arrived in and in the centre, slumped against the sink, was the body of a girl. Just fading away as Kid and Patty entered was another puppet in the bath, they didn't have time to make out who it was but they did see the grim colour of the water fade with it. Angie walking in on the dead puppet must have been the final straw to her bad dream because her soul floated a ft above her body and the same grim colour ran from the sink and onto the floor below.

Kid let out a shuddering sigh and reached out for the soul. It drifted towards him naturally, feeling the sanctuary provided by a nearby god of death, and as his hands closed around it he felt it settling down. _fear to calm, sorrow to acceptance, regret to rejoicing and your soul to rest._ The soul glowed brighter for a moment then evaporated, drifting upwards in its last visible moments as Kid sent it onwards to wherever it belonged. _Somewhere good hopefully, something to compensate for our late arrival._ "Sorry about this."

"Kid?"

His weapon's worried tone caused Kid to turn from the body. The illusion was disintegrating. They hadn't shut the door behind them and down the corridor Kid saw floorboards ripping away from the ground, jerking upwards and vanishing as the void tore towards them, consuming everything in its path. He reminded himself that this had happened before and when the illusion ended it would just dump them back in their world, but that didn't make the view any less distressing.

Patty rushed forward and slammed the door shut but moments later, that too was collapsing and the nothingness rushed in. She grabbed Kid's hand just as she felt the all too familiar lurch in the pit of her stomach.

The world twisted, the floor underneath them disappeared and Kid grabbed the upper arm of Angie's body. _Warmer than expected._ He swallowed, hit with a sudden sense of vertigo, then the illusion gave one last lurch as the void took them. _Pop_.

*                           *                           *

The centre of the illusion wasn't anywhere near as glamorous as you might expect. About the size of a bedsit, bare walls and a dirty wooden floor contained only a cheap looking sofa which The Eye sat on cross-legged. Then again she didn't need much: The room existed only to be her fortress, somewhere for her to meditate and watch the worlds she'd created without being disturbed. After all, the room had no doors or windows. In the pitch blackness, each of the eyes carved into her skin projected a different image, almost like a surveillance room where she could monitor different areas of her illusion.

 **Pop**. The weakest girl had given way. Grinning, The Eye brought forward images of her oldest, current illusion - it had already started eroding, as they did when they'd served their purpose. It had been a pretty standard job, the girl had basic enough memories to sift through; bullied at school, friends who were sometimes crueller than the bullies, topped off by discovering her only family dead in the bath after a particularly hard day. Give somebody an inescapable loop of the worst days of their life and a way out, then wait for their soul to appear.

But the soul was gone. That couldn't be right. The Eye pulled up a projection of the bathroom she'd created, a perfect replica of the one she'd seen in the girl's memories… Except there were two people in it who shouldn't be: the DWMA agents she'd encountered twice before. The stupid little boy had stolen her soul! Her lip curled as she watched them back away from the edge of the illusion. Well she'd show them. She'd learnt plenty about them from the new girl: the most prized member of her current collection. She prepared a new scene but as void made contact with the younger sister's shoe they vanished from her realm, taking Angie's corpse with them.

The Eye sighed, she could branch back into reality and pluck them from the real world but it was unnecessary: she had a pretty good idea of what they were trying to do. They'd be back soon enough. Instead she turned her focus to the girl in question. She'd never managed to manipulate a person for this long before, the girl truly had no idea she was in an illusion, if she could keep it up she may be able to permanently alter her guinea pig's identity. The Eye grinned: she was creating a new form of moral manipulation that'd have the dead spider witch frothing at the mouth.

*                           *                           *

Girls came and left the shelter, some quicker than others, some returning again and over this time Liz worked with nearly all of them. However, she there were few she connected with as well as Lydia. Liz helped her study the baby books, accompanied her to doctors appointments and found herself thinking of the woman as a friend rather than part of her job. Their sessions together improved Lydia's mood too, until she'd look at the cost of a place to live in comparison with the pay provided by jobs that allowed adequate time for her to care for her child. It just wasn't feasible.

"You shouldn't worry about that so much," Liz said, sprawled across her bed looking at baby clothes in a catalogue. "You can stay here however long you need to, that's the whole point of the place. You wouldn't be the first resident with a baby so we have cribs in storage and everything."

Lydia sat with her back against the wall to Liz's left, her hands rested naturally on her stomach. "That's not the point. I don't like feeling like a burden- and don't tell me I'm not," She said cutting Liz off before she could speak. "because it's just how I feel, even if it's not the case."

Liz sighed. "I mean, if it's that important to you; when you feel like you're well enough to work again, after the birth, find yourself a job, work whatever hours you want until you save up enough money to give you a head start and I can look after the baby for ya."

Lydia's mouth fell slack as Liz spoke.

"It won't make a difference to me, I'll be here anyway and how hard is it to watch some Kid? Maggie managed to keep me out of trouble and that was back before I worked here so she was on her own!"

"You'd do that for us?"

Liz grinned. "Yeah, dumbass! I just said I've got nothing better to do! It's part of my job anyway!"

Lydia smiled but her eyes welled with tears. "You act so crass, Liz, but you're a truly kind person."

Liz squirmed under the compliment. "Aww, c'mon don't get all mushy on me… Hey! Look at this ugly koala onesie, I'm SO getting your baby that when it comes." She sat up, wrapped an arm around Lydia's shoulders and shoved the catalogue in her face.

"H- hey! Stop that!" Lydia laughed, letting the tears run down her cheeks.

Liz laughed along with her and dropped the catalogue but froze when she heard a knock at the front door. In the time she'd spent growing up at the shelter she'd learnt to tell the subtle difference in knocks; the rapid but quiet knocking of someone desperate for help, the firm, emotionless knocks from police and the hard, careless knock of a man looking for someone. This knock replicated the latter.

As Liz tensed up, Lydia became worried. "What is it? Is this bad?"

Liz rose from the bed, face stormy, and walked to the front door. _Maggie will be sleeping right now, it's better for me to do this._ Her firm stance and power walk alerted curious girls that this wasn't a good time to be milling around in the corridor. Liz peered through the peephole and managed to make out a bulky looking, rugged man with thinning blonde hair and heavily pockmarked skin. He pounded on the door again and Liz called through to him without touching the door.

"What do you want?" She could ignore him but she knew from experience that he'd knock forever and until he broke a law, calling the police was pointless.

"Tell Lydia I need to speak to her." Liz's stomach twisted, she hadn't expected that. Behind her she heard Lydia creep into the hallway, Liz turned briefly to send her a "go away" look but was ignored.

"There's nobody here called Lydia."

"Hey! Don't lie to me, okay? I know she's in there, I just wanna talk!"

Liz had a strong _fuck off_ ready on her tongue but then a hand landed softly on her shoulder.

"Let me speak to him."

Liz raised an eyebrow at Lydia but her expression was firm and confident. "Well, if you're sure about this…" _This is a bad idea._ Liz thought but started on the locks, nonetheless. She opened the door but two high-quality chains kept it from opening too far, just enough so the man could see Lydia and she in turn could look outside at him.

"I thought I told you to leave me be." She said, voice holding strong despite what Liz had anticipated.

"Look," The man said, also keeping his composure - more than what could be said for most of the shelter's _visitors_. "I meant what I said: I want to marry you."

Liz looked at Lydia, her face didn't change but she saw the lump move in her throat.

"I just can't provide for this child, I'm sure you understand? You must be in the same boat right?"

Lydia looked away from the man, the cogs in her brain whirred and she was starting to become panicked. "But I want it…" She said "Besides! It doesn't matter! I'm due in a month."

"I know people."

"What?" Lydia's eyes grew wide.

"It's not hard, I know people who can get rid of a baby."

Liz couldn't see the man's face from where she was stood but she knew he was being dead serious and _probably_ telling the truth. "Alright, that's enough-"

"C'mon, you don't have to pull any of this shit again, Lydia! No more sleeping with strangers just to eat! All you have to do is get rid of it! Fuck, you can even give birth and just leave it in the street somewhere just forget about it! Just-"

"No!" Lydia snapped, her arms by her sides. "I've had enough of you! You're unreliable and whoever this child turns out to be I know they'll be better than you! I'll make sure of it! Leave me be!"

The man was silent. For a moment it seemed like he'd respected Lydia's decision, then his arm burst through the gap between the doorway and wall and latched onto her arm. He must have been incredibly strong because before either of them had time to react, he wrenched Lydia into the door by her arm.

_Fuck!_

Lydia wailed as she made contact with the frame, she struggled but out of sight the man would not let her go.

Adrenaline hit Liz like a freight train. She could try to pull Lydia back in, but with the man pulling her the other way, it would probably dislocate her shoulder. _The locks._ Liz rushed to the door and threw off the chains, then flung it open.

With Lydia no longer trapped, she was dragged forward, catching the man off guard as she hit his chest, but before he had time to recover and seriously hurt her, Liz rushed in and punched him in the throat. The man dropped like a sack of shit, coughing wetly. As Lydia was freed, she stumbled back towards the shelter, Liz caught her by the arm and pushed her ahead, following quickly and locking the door with shaking hands.

"What the hell's going on?" Maggie stood at the top of the stairs in her nightgown, looking downwards.

Outside, the man was still coughing, in fact it almost sounded like he was choking. Liz knew a punch to the throat could kill someone if done correctly, she hadn't meant to cause serious harm it was just the quickest way she could think of to put him out of action. She picked up the phone from a small table by the door but was shaking too much to hit the right keys.

Suddenly Maggie was at her side. "What happened?" She looked serious but equally concerned with how rattled Liz seemed.

"Ambulance. Police." Liz managed to mutter before following Lydia back into her room.

Maggie watched her go, tempted to follow and get a full explanation, but then she heard the commotion from the dying man outside and called 911 instead.

***                           *                           ***

The fading disequilibrium marked a successful escape from the illusion, but for a moment the darkness made it seemed like they were still trapped in the void. However, cars cutting through puddles and people chatting could be heard muffled through the walls, not to mention the comforting buzz of a city's soul wavelength. They were definitely back in the real world.

Kid blinked, he'd been told in the past his eyes looked cat-like and whether or not that was true, they granted him fairly decent night-vision in the same sort of way. They were in another bathroom however this one was long abandoned; the walls and floors had been torn up by vandals to get at the copper piping, the sink had been ripped from the wall and there was no power - hence the darkness.

"Kid?" Patty turned on the spot, arms out and eyes wide unable to see on her own.

"Don't worry we're back, it's just dark in here."

Patty stopped spinning. "Oh." She reached into the pocket of her sweatpants and pulled out her phone, activating it's torch, the light was weak but enough to be comforting. Giggling, she pointed the beam at Kid's face and he squinted, she then took it to just past him and yelped dropping the phone. "Shit!"

Kid turned, having a pretty good idea of what she'd seen and sure enough he'd successfully brought Angie's body back with them. It lay in the bathtub almost peacefully.

"Damn… Just caught me off guard…"

Now that they were relatively safe Kid bent down to examine the body; there were dry tear tracks on her cheeks but the way she'd crumpled, when transported to the bath, meant her hands had fallen on her stomach like she was only napping. The white of her vest was spoilt where her arms rested and he was glad they were palm-side-down - it wasn't something he really wanted to look at. _How did she do it? Objects in the illusions shouldn't logically be able to cause real world harm._

As Patty stepped closer to provide light, there was a glint from something wedged between Angie's hip and the side of the bath: a knife.

 _That'd do it…_ Kid exhaled, filled with a sudden sense of dread. The Eye could drag people into her illusions, it should've been obvious she could transport objects too. _Things have been more dangerous than we could imagine all this time._

Within 45 minutes, Kid had used the bathroom's mirror to call for the body to be collected and him and Patty stumbled back into the daylight. Somehow the abandoned flat they'd ended up in was 4 miles from the industrial estate.

"The doorways must be relative to their real world counterparts, NOT how far you travel in the illusion." Kid said to Patty as he followed her through backstreets. "But we were kicked out of the illusion due to its collapse so I have no idea where that fits in, did we travel through the doorway we were closest too? I have a lot of questions about the whole process…"

Patty was being atypically quiet: them failing to save Angie had caught her by surprise. It was fun to follow Kid around, cracking the jokes and goofing off while he took care of the serious stuff but the possibility of Liz not coming out of it okay was growing. _She'll be fine, she always is._ Kid was worried too, he thought he was doing a good job of hiding it but he wasn't usually as awkward as he was being. Patty didn't like that he was trying to hide it from her, maybe acting like a child most of the time did have its drawbacks.

"Should we tell Maggie?"

 Patty snapped from her thoughts and looked over her shoulder, Kid had stopped rambling and was now addressing her directly.

"Obviously, we'll have to tell her at some point but you know her better than I do, maybe it's best that we wait until the whole thing is over?"

She didn't feel like talking to Maggie right at that moment. "It's probably best to wait until we have some good news to balance it out, let's go rescue the others, yeah?"

Kid nodded.

They reached the industrial estate and Patty headed straight for the car they'd fallen through two hours before, but when she threw open the bonnet the doorway was gone.

"Huh?"

Kid peered over her shoulder and sure enough there was no sign the hood had ever held a portal; there was a small puddle inside but the water was clear - albeit grimy and covered with the rainbow sheen of something touched by oil. It didn't smell great.

"What gives!" Patty said slamming the bonnet with more force than necessary.

"When the illusion collapsed I guess the door must have faded too…"

"But we walked all the fuckin' way here!" Patty groaned, collapsing onto the car and drawing her feet up under herself. "Well now what? Where the hell are we gonna find another doorway?"

Kid thought through common themes in the gates he'd seen in Angie's illusion: bathtub, closet, fireplace… Both fireplaces and closets would be left behind in abandoned properties, even once picked clean by thieves, whilst still being routine enough that trying to find the specific one The Eye had chosen as a doorway would take them days. _You can tell she's been doing this a while…_ The bath had been different, it had linked to the car bonnet, no, not even the car itself but the water inside: the water had held the same kind of properties as mirrors did for a Grim Reaper. "Patty do you know anywhere private with a lot of water, especially water that's not going to evaporate?"

Patty furrowed her brow in thought. "Well… There's the docks: we're right by the sea, remember?"

Kid frowned, if the gateways did act as close to mirror magic as he imagined then the sea wouldn't work. "No, it needs to be still water: something that would hold a reflection or at least not distort your image as you move through it."

Patty's eyes went wide. "Oh my god I know exactly where she'd hide a cubic FUCKTON of doors!" She rocketed off the car excitedly. "Skate! Summon your board 'cos it's pretty far from here."

*                           *                           *

Liz sat in the hospital waiting room with her feet on one of the small tables, they hadn't let her in the room since she wasn't family, so she chose to push the magazines off with her boots in silent protest as she waited.

The nurse that had been scowling at her every time he passed walked languidly up to her, eyeing the reading material covering the floor with displeasure on his way. "She's done, you can go in now."

Liz fought against the urge to squeal in excitement at the news and strolled out of the waiting room. "Thanks." She said, waving a leisurely hand at the nurse as she passed him.

"I guess I'll just pick up all these magazines then." He said. "S'not like I'm busy and underpaid or anything…"

As Liz rounded the corner and made her way to the delivery room she couldn't help the grin that spread across her face.

The day Lydia had been attacked she'd shrunk into herself, the conformation that her lover didn't really have her best interests at heart had been a crippling blow and no joke or comforting speech from Liz could coax her back from her shell. The man in question had recovered from Liz's blow although his throat had to be opened by doctors so they could insert a tube into his larynx, he'd since been removed from the hospital by police and he hadn't been seen since. A few days after this news had made its way to Liz, Lydia appeared in her doorway, stony-faced and determined with the announcement that she'd make good on her promise of raising a child with the compassion that their father lacked. She'd never looked back.

Lydia raised her head and smiled as Liz entered the room. She looked exhausted but beautiful nonetheless.

In Lydia's arms was a baby, they slept against their mother's chest, cradled tightly and Liz was overcome with emotion. She wished she could say the baby was gorgeous but it was a baby and as such sort of looked like a skinned rabbit, all red and scrunched up. Liz found herself in love with it anyway.

"Oh my god!" She whispered creeping close to the bed, her smile widening. "Hey! Hi!" She'd never considered herself a kids person but the child looked so peaceful.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Lydia's voice was hoarse but happy.

"Oh a little girl! Awesome!"

The baby's eyes cracked open, they were bright blue like her mother's.

"Yeah…" Lydia said almost as if in a trance. "I have her name all picked out too."

Liz sank into one of the plastic chairs by Lydia's bed. "Yeah?"

She nodded. "I… Hope I'm not overstepping my bounds here but I think I'd like to call her Elizabeth."

Liz's stomach dropped.

"I might be being overdramatic here but I think we both owe you our lives."

She sucked in a shaky breath. _No way._

"Of course it'll make things at the shelter confusing for a while, but when I do eventually move on I don't ever want to forget you."

 _Don't cry._ Liz shuddered as she tried to think of a reply, completely emotionally overwhelmed. _Don't cry._ She nodded happily at Lydia, tears spilling down her cheeks and Liz started laughing. "Yeah, sure!" She sniffed and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her jumper. "If you want your baby to be named after a boring, loser like me then who am I to argue!"

"Aww," Lydia cocked her head.

_We're practically like family now!_

"You're not-"

Liz groaned as white hot pain shot through her eyes and into the back of her skull.

"Oh- Oh my god! Are you alright?!"

 _Cluster headache. Fuck._ She grabbed the sides of her head, yowling, and pushed inwards hoping the pressure would distract her but it was the worst bout she'd ever experienced.

"Liz?!"

 _Not a headache_. Pain in her teeth as she tumbled off the chair and smacked her mouth into the linoleum below. _Memories. REAL memories. She's not my family, she's not even fucking real!_ The taste of copper in her mouth and the pain increasing.

"Someone help! Nurse!"

 _Patty is my family. Kid is my family. Patty. Oh my god! How could I forget about Patty?! My little sister! What the fuck's wrong with me!_ Through the pain, Liz managed to feel firm hands hoist her off the ground.

"Ma'am? Are you alright?" The nurse's lips didn't move in time with her voice.

All of a sudden Liz was picking up on how false everything was. How false everyone was. _How could I forget?_

Lydia was sat up in bed, looking worried but her face was wrong, she looked like a puppet.

The pain increased again and Liz screamed. It was so tempting to ignore the fallacy of the situation to end the agony but on the other end of the spectrum was fear. _How long have I been here?_ The nurse's nutcracker mouth flapped up and down and Liz pushed her away. _Fight it. Like that Angie girl told me too. I forgot her too? Where did she go?_ The pain was too much, she couldn't see or breathe. Liz retched and crumpled again but still refused to give in.

A new voice, no, an old voice. The Eye. "Thick-headed, irrelevant bitch. Just do as you're told."

She was no longer in the hospital but floating in a void. Intense fear gripped her soul tight and Liz started crying through the pain.

"It's not so bad, the life I've created for you and as long as you play your part you get to live it. The alternative isn't what you want trust me." Angry and low, the witch's voice rumbled like thunder. "Your siblings are dead. You're out of sight and out of mind. Nobody's coming to the rescue. I'm so close to a break-through in human conditioning, now be a good pet and accept your new role or I'll break you like all my failed test subjects."

The paranoia, the pain and confusion, it all became too much. Liz passed out of consciousness. _P- atty..?"_

Liz was no longer able to hear The Eye's voice but she spoke anyway. "Fine. Sleep. A soft reset should do you the trick.

*                           *                           *

Kid, swerved between dumpsters and discarded boxes as he made his way towards the next illusion. Patty had tried to get him to carry her in weapon mode but his increased nervousness had heightened the power of his compulsions and he found it too distressing without also holding Liz.

As a result, Patty stood on the back of Kid's board with her arms wrapped around his neck, talking into his ear like a Sat-nav. "Left." She swayed with him as the boy veered in the direction he'd been told.

Kid actually laughed a little as he guided the skateboard over trash he didn't have time to avoid.

"Jeeze!" Patty said as she lost her balance, getting flashbacks to their mission on the runaway express. "I thought you're supposed t' be Mr. Super Serious Death now…"

"Yeah well, Mr. Super Serious Death doesn't get to spend as much time at the skate park as he'd like because of all the super serious paperwork, so excuse me for enjoying myself on route to wherever you're taking us."

Patty sighed. "Right."

"Thanks, I know I am." Kid said, but swerved right before Patty got irritated.

"You're not usually this annoying. Right, again. You tryna fill a quota now sis ain't here?"

"That's your job isn't it?" Kid jested.

Patty smirked glad that her efforts to cheer up her meister weren't in vain. "Naw, I'm the comic relief, you're brains and sis is beauty, get it right, brains: that's like your job. Left- oh shit we're here!" Patty hopped off the board and Kid swung it round into a stop in front of a large building.

"Oh, Patty you're a genius!"

The building was about the size of a warehouse but constructed from a faded, mint-green fibreglass, it had no windows and the graffiti encased the bottom two metres like mould. Above the boarded front door was a sign, the letters had long since been stolen but their combined effort in blocking the sun spelled out: MARINA COMMUNITY CENTRE.

"If it's abandoned they would have drained the pool though, right?" Kid asked.

"Yeah but the roof is shit, there's always like a ft of water in there. Me 'n sis used to sleep there when it got especially cold but then this gang kinda took over and the turf war wasn't worth it." Patty lead them to the side of the warehouse, where one of the fibreglass panels was loose and they entered the building.

It was miserably dark inside so Patty turned on her phone's torch once again. They'd arrived in a large, carpeted room that from all the low plug sockets Kid deduced was once a gym. There were even spare poles left from exercise equipment that had been moved long ago.

"Why'd this place shut? Looks like a good enough area for it."

"That's the best part! Well… Not for the people involved, but it wasn't well staffed enough; a kid drowned when the lifeguard skipped out on his shift and that was the end of that. The Eye seems so edgy and weird though, I bet she'd store TONS of doors here!"

To get to the pool they had to cut through a large tiled room that doubled as showers and changing facilities. Soon their footsteps were accompanied by a light splashing and Patty's torch beam illuminated black mould caking the grouting between tiles. At times, the sound of them kicking through water made it seem like there were more than two people in the room.

"This place stinks." Patty whispered, she wasn't sure why she was whispering but the low levels of light made it seem appropriate.

"Yeah, whatever water's here has long since gone stagnant but if it's hanging around that means The Eye doesn't have to worry about one of her doorways disappearing. I'm hoping if we go through an older doorway it'll take us deeper into the illusion and closer to finding Liz."

"That'd be nice."

Water dripped from somewhere close by, then Kid swore he heard a changing room door open. _Is it just my nerves or are we not alone here?_ Kid cast out his soul perception and sure enough there were three other people in the changing rooms. "Patty!"

Hearing her meister's panicked shout, Patty stopped just as someone on the other side of the cubical row turned on a floodlight.

"Well whadda we have here?" The man leaning against the wall could only be described as a brick shithouse. "A couple o' kids looking for somewhere private to host their make-out session?" He mocked.

"Eww, " Patty said. "He's like my adopted brother."

"Look, I don't actually care it's an intimidation tactic." He said waltzing towards them. "What I mean is fuck off."

"Yeah!" A different man added, sidling out one of the cubicles. "Go away ya' little pests!"

" _This_ is the gang you and Liz had trouble with?" Kid asked, unimpressed.

She frowned. "No?"

A third man strolled out from behind a nearby column. "A nice old lady promised us a lotta cash to keep this place clear and not poke around too much, so that's JUST what we're gonna do."

"So scram!"

Kid sighed. "What a mess… We're just going to look at the pool." He started walking again.

"Hey, hey, hey, HEY, HEY! Didn't you hear what I just said you stupid, emo-looking fuck?!"

"Why are people always going after my dress sense? It's traditional…"

The three men encircled Kid, practically frothing at the mouths.

"You wanna finish this quick? Liz is waiting for us!" Patty said from behind him.

"Fine. But I won't enjoy it."

Patty giggled, transforming. "C'mon you can freak out about symmetry and shit later, let's kick some butt!"

Upon seeing the gun appear in Kid's hand, the main guy rushed him swinging a bit of pipe that looked like it was once part of a shower system. Kid caught the pipe in one hand and shot the man in the mouth, he'd limited the shot so it wasn't fatal but it'd sure hurt. Main guy fell away with a yelp and his lackeys hurried in, Kid dodged the punch from the left and winced as he heard bones crunch against the pillar behind, he then swung the pipe he'd taken from main guy at right guy's knees. Right guy crumpled, wailing, by which time main guy was returning to the fray.

"I'm already bored of this." Kid said and shot the floodlight.

All three men yowled as the room was plunged once again into darkness.

Kid weaved between them and ran in the direction of the pool, letting his grip on Patty loosen when he felt he'd put enough distance between them.

Getting the idea, Patty turned back into a girl and grabbed Kid's hand, letting herself be pulled in the right direction, trusting he could see where he was going. She could hear squabbling from behind her as the men noticed the pink flash. "Let's hope there IS a door in the pool."

 They burst through into the next room and Kid skidded to a stop at the edge of a large, rectangular hole, it had been drained of its water but sure enough, he could just about make out a grim looking puddle in the deep end.

"Whadduya see, Kid?"

"You're right, there's some water but I can't see well enough to tell if it's a gateway." Kid guided Patty sideways as one of the men ran blindly forwards and fell into the dry end of the pool like a lemming.

"Well, we've gotta try, right? Plus these dudes said an old lady's paying them, I bet that's The Eye!"

 _She's got a point._ "Alright, c'mon then." Kid pulled her around the edge of the pool, to the deep end. "It's pretty far down, I'll go first and then if you don't hear me swearing you know it's a gateway and can follow."

"No! What if we get separated?"

Kid raised an eyebrow at Patty even though she wouldn't be able to see it. "What, you'd rather risk breaking your ankles?"

"…I mean, kinda?"

The main guy had entered the poolside with another floodlight and Kid felt other souls with malicious intent approaching the area. He sighed. "Okay then, ready?"

Patty had already jumped by the time he'd finished his sentence and Kid was dragged off the edge behind her. They hit the water hard and then the world lurched.

*                           *                           *

As underfunded as the shelter was, it's beds were comfortable and Liz found herself burrowing deeper under her quilt. She didn't want to get up, feeling somehow on the edge of exhaustion despite only just waking, but she felt like she was in danger. She rolled upright, her head hurt. _What was that, a nightmare? I've already forgotten what it was about._

The morning passed sluggishly, she helped make breakfast: pancakes on Sundays to keep the cold away for those who chose to go to church. She'd never been a big believer but it brought some of the girls solace so after plates were washed, she escorted those that wanted to go to the nearby chapel.

Amongst these girls was Lydia. "You feeling better?" She smiled as she walked, cradling the baby - now a few months old - to her chest.

"Hard to say… Maggie thinks I'm dying."

Lydia snorted. "Don't be silly, you just fainted. Happens to the best of us."

Something about the interaction felt hollow but Liz didn't question it, she'd learnt to accept things right off the bat. Bad things came to those who pried.

The church was warm, it's candlelight soothing and Liz lead the seven girls to one of the pews near the back of the room. The priest nodded in their direction when he spotted them, then continued talking to a low-toned man sat near the front.

The baby started gurgling unhappily and Lydia bounced it on her knee. "Shh, hush little one."

Liz took in the narrative portrayed though stained glass, the windows were shifting and changing every time she focused on them. First she saw a mass, it's congregation was made-up of women in fancy dress, some animal themed, some not. _Witches_. Her head hurt but Liz felt detached from her body. _The pain's not even real, the human brain is a pretty incredible thing if you think about it._

The priest addressed his mismatched parish with words of hope and devotion and they replied in turn. "Amen. And also with you. Our father, who art in heaven…"

Another window showed a intimidating figure in a long cloak, he concealed his face behind a mask like a liar. Barely visible behind the swaths of black cloth that made up the figure was his young son, bright-eyed and innocent. Liz smiled. _I see you, Kid_. She was somewhat aware that her thoughts were being tampered with by an external force but hadn't that always been the case? It didn't matter anyhow: there was nothing she could do to stop it.

They were singing hymns now, voices raised high to the heavens. Somebody slipped in through the crack in the church doors: a man that Liz had once punched in the throat with such scientific precision that he'd been bound to a hospital bed before he'd been bound to a prison sentence.

Liz dropped her smile. _Obviously not a very long prison sentence_. The final stained window was the most beautiful; it held the image of two sisters, the younger sister smiled lovingly towards her older sister's vacant face. The older sister was crying. Why was she crying?

The baby cried. Lydia tried to comfort it but she wouldn't stop shrieking. "Hush now, Elizabeth!" Lydia looked at the other church-goers apologetically as she pushed past them to get outside.

"I know what you're trying to do." Liz said, drowned out by everybody's singing. "The baby's supposed to be me, Lydia's supposed to be my mom. You're trying to make me feel bad." Liz felt the presence that had been watching her shift, it seemed amused. "Show me what you want to show me then."

As Lydia carried her screaming child outside the man followed her

Liz thought about doing something but she was apathetic towards the puppet's plight. _I suppose it doesn't matter, I've never cried for false characters in films or books before, why start now?_ "Go on, you've got my attention. Teach me this lesson, show me what morals I'm missing."

With cries of _Gloria_ and _Hallelujah_ , the song reached its crescendo and the priest began preparing the bread and wine.

Just over a month later Lydia confirmed she was pregnant again.

***                           *                           ***

"Ah!" Momentum forced Patty forward onto her face, thankfully the ground underneath her was somewhat soft.

"I admire your courage, Patty, but sometimes I do wish you'd put a bit more thought into things before you just _go_ for them." Kid said helping her back up.

"You just dawdle too much." Patty laughed and brushed the dirt off her clothes, before taking their new environment in. "Woah…"

They were in a meadow. Bright sunlight danced on blades of long grass and vibrantly coloured butterflies flitted between wild flowers, peacefully. A gentle wind caressed loose articles of clothing and hair, carrying with it the sweet scent of honey. Despite the natural apprehension they felt, Kid and Patty found a weight being lifted from their souls.

"Oh this can't be so bad!" Patty said, skipping out a few feet.

Kid was cautious when he followed her. "Yeah but you don't know how far we are into this illusion, this could be early stages yet."

"Hmmhg…" Patty narrowed her eyes. "Or one of the girls could have really bad hay fever."

Kid focused his soul perception. As he'd hoped, the doorway had taken them much closer to the centre of the illusion, not only was Liz's soul closer but he could get specifics on the wavelength she was giving off. _Resigned, unfazed, almost bitter_. Kid relaxed, it was unlike her but at least she didn't seem to be in any distress. "Your sister's not too far, she seems to be coping well enough, too."

Patty looked up from the pond she'd found and grinned. "See? I said she'd be fine!"

 _And that pond must be the illusion equivalent of the door we just passed through_. There were koi carp swimming in it and large, blooming lily pads floating on its surface but the water held the same metallic shimmer as the water in the car had. Kid made a mental note of its location and focused once again on the nearby souls: both of the remaining girls were in the current illusion. The first soul was close to them, but the second seemed to be in pain. _Fear, confusion, agony_. It's wavelength was erratic, and thinking of what happened to Angie, Kid decided to head for that one first. "C'mon." He said. "Liz isn't in this illusion so I don't think we can reach her but we can rescue the other two girls."

Patty saluted and walked in step with Kid. They made their way towards the edge of the meadow and what looked like a forest. Suddenly, Patty grabbed Kid's arm and pointed down the left of the meadow. "Look!"

There was a girl in a long, pleated skirt dancing amongst the flowers, every now and then snippets of her laughter were carried up by the wind. She had a soul and it was at relative peace.

 _Must be the girl I felt close by. Good, that gives me a sense of scale in here._ "We're going to fetch the other girl first, Patty: she seems upset. Besides, I don't know what's going to happen when we try to approach these people, it's likely that their reactions will alert The Eye that we're here." _If she doesn't already know…_

"So it's best we grab her second, cos she's closer to where we arrived?"

"Yes, it should make escaping a bit safer."

As they entered the woods the atmosphere changed, the serenity granted by the meadow was gone and replaced with an aura of apprehension. The trees branched out like mutated hands and sunlight that had seemed so bright only moments ago all but failed to penetrate the canopy above.

Kid followed the distressed wavelength he'd felt then his blood ran cold as he heard howling close by.

"What the fuck was that?!" Said Patty, pressing her back to Kid's.

"Keep calm. It's not here for us."

There was another howl in response from the other end of the forest, then two more nearer to where Kid had felt the soul. Then they heard screaming. A flash of white blazed past Kid, Inches to his right. The wolf was bigger than any canine had the right to be, it's jaws were black and slobber dribbled out between pointed teeth. Another scream, this time slightly closer.

"Okay, maybe not that calm." Kid reached behind for Patty and bolted towards where he'd last heard the scream.

Yapping and snarls grew in volume as they ran, there were more white blurs darting in and out of trees and howls layered over each other like song.

"How many of these things are there?!" Patty yelled.

The trees fell apart to reveal a clearing and in that clearing a girl was being encircled by the wolves. She sobbed, dragging her hair in front of her eyes and a particularly large wolf snapped at her feet every time she tried to make a brake for any gaps that appeared in the circle.

"Hey, leave her alone!" Patty said, skidding to a stop next to Kid.

The girl looked up with wide eyes as she heard the voice and for a moment she seemed hopeful. "Help me!"

The big wolf had stopped pacing and slowly turned its head towards Kid and Patty. One of its eyes flitted from yellow to black and Kid realised The Eye herself was using it to spy on them, not too unlike Azusa's special ability. The wolf's mouth twisted in a way it shouldn't have been able to and it grinned.

_She knows we're here._

The wolves pounced. Almost ten mouths snapped and ripped at the girl's skin and she screamed.

"Patty!" Kid's voice broke as he yelled, he then remembered that the wolves wouldn't be able to actually harm her, but still: The Eye would be able to make her feel excruciating pain.

On cue Patty transformed and landed as a gun in Kid's hand.

Kid ran towards the centre of the clearing, shooting wolves out of the way as he went. The sound of clothing and flesh being ripped apart was revolting, that combined with the psychological weigh of holding only Patty in her weapon form made Kid gag. _Really not enjoying this… But I have more important things to worry about._ Wolves snapped at his legs as he reached the girl but he couldn't feel the bites, then like a switch being turned on he felt long fingers routing through his mind and suddenly he felt everything. He keeled over as a jaw latched around his left ankle and cried out in pain.

"Kid!"

Another wolf hit him from the right and flipped him onto his back, biting down on his arm and holding it in place like a shackle. Then the huge wolf he'd seen earlier walked leisurely up his body, putting pressure on Kid's chest. It grinned again, face hovering so close over Kid's that he could feel the heat of its breath and then the wolf tore out his oesophagus.

"Kid? What's going on!"

Kid thrashed around under the wolf and screamed as he felt white hot fangs pierce the flesh in his throat. _It's not real!_  Tendons snapped and blood rushed down the sides of his neck as a large chunk of him was ripped away. _If this was real you wouldn't be able to scream, you need vocal chords for that._ It certainly hurt enough to be real. The wolf swallowed the slab of flesh it had pulled from Kid, then latched around the remainder of his neck. Kid became aware of Patty's panicked voice from his hand. _Do! Something!_  He raised the gun and shot the wolf in the muzzle.

The wolf reeled backwards, pawing at its face and yelping. When Kid had attacked the wolves on the way into the fray they'd seemed more surprised than injured, but now he was fully tapped into the illusion's neurological system he could hurt _them_ too. As the wolf opened the remainder of its muzzle to snarl, Kid shot it in the roof of its mouth and it collapsed on him, dead. Everything stopped. Then all at once the wolves left the girl and swarmed him instead.

Still on his back, Kid gripped Patty in both hands and shot each wolf as they leapt for him. Bodies crumpled around him, some landed on him, some to his sides but within seconds the wolves were dead. He crawled out from under the wolf pile and stood upright. "I don't usually advocate for animal cruelty but that was really fucking unpleasant." He brought his fingers to his neck and although he could feel his rapid pulse under the skin, when he looked down strands of flesh draped across his collar like a cravat, from where the wolf had carved a void into it. _Yet I'm breathing and speaking perfectly fine. This is some dangerously powerful magic._

The girl hadn't faired so well. She looked less a girl and more like the flesh equivalent of silly string dragged across the clearing, but although Kid couldn't even discern which lump was supposed to be which limb, she was still audibly crying and very much alive.

 _Really, REALLY unpleasant_. "Hey it's okay, this isn't real: you're fine." Kid closed his eyes and reached towards her. Without his sight, he identified the girl's leg, then he reached up and took her hand.

Every time Kid touched her, the girl flinched and yowled like she'd never been in more pain.

Kid heard a sickening squelch from behind him and looked over his shoulder. The wolves were regenerating. The Eye was healing them.

"Shit." Kid stood up pulling the girl with him despite her screaming. _I don't really want to cause her any distress but we don't have time._ "C'mon, we have to go!"

She fell as soon as Kid started running, not able to move her body and ignore the pain. The biggest wolf yelped, it's back paws twitching.

"Oh for God's sake!" Kid dropped Patty and hoisted the girl onto his shoulders in a fireman's lift.

"Holy fuck!" There was a bright flash as Patty transformed. "S- Shit! What the fuck?"

"She'll be fine once we get her out of the illusion but we need to go."

A few of the wolves growled as they attempted to move, Patty looked behind and noticed thin wisps of smoke curling from rapidly shrinking bullet holes.

"We need to go, _now_." Kid said starting back towards the meadow as quickly as he could whilst carrying the girl - who'd seemingly fainted from the shock. "Patty, I need you to go ahead and grab that other girl, take her through the gateway as quickly as you can, yeah?"

Patty frowned.

"Please, we don't have time to argue about this. I'll be fine."

She huffed, but sprinted ahead. "You better be, you stripy bastard!"

Patty made her way through the trees as quickly as she could, intending to escort the girl to reality then race back to help her meister. She broke out of the forest and headed towards where she'd seen the girl dancing. Out in the distance, the girl had stopped spinning and was looking straight up at the sky: it was blood red and in place of the sun a huge eye stared down at the meadow. "This is so overdramatic." Patty gasped as she reached the girl. "Hey, we gotta get away from here now!"

The girl turned lazily and smiled at Patty in a vacant manner. "But why? It's such nice weather out here! Don't you want to stay and enjoy the sunshi-"

"Nope!" Patty grabbed the girl by the wrist and yanked her towards the pool.

"Stop that!" The girl cried. "I don’t to leave! This place is a paradise!" She fought against Patty's tugging, digging her heels into the ground.

Patty groaned and turned around roughly shaking her. "Cut that shit out!" _Paradise my ass. This place fucking sucks._ She managed to get the girl to the edge of the pond and pushed her in, but as Patty turned to run back to the forest she felt the girl's hand close around her arm. Patty panicked as the world lurched.


	4. Conflicts Of Godhood

A year passed. Lucidity hit Liz in waves. Sometimes she was aware she was in an illusion, sometimes she couldn't remember anything about reality. Most often, she had two sets of memories and extreme difficulty telling which was real and which wasn't.

She stumbled down the hallway and to her room. That was where she was going right? To her room? _Kid must be fake. I've never seen him, not once. Besides, nobody has a kid and calls them "Kid"_. Lydia was in her room, the younger version of Liz sprawled across the floor, colouring, and the new baby asleep in a crib in the corner. Liz wandered over to the crib and stared at the baby inside. _Patty… Is Patty real?_

"We're leaving soon." Lydia said. She said it a lot lately.

Liz and Lydia had become distant. Liz wasn't quite all there, Maggie had said something about a disease. Liz had mentioned the witch messing with her head but the others laughed at her, a sympathetic kind of laugh.

Without somebody talking to her and being there for her, Lydia had become increasingly reserved and she'd outsourced her affection to the man who'd almost broken her arm. Nobody had bothered to tell her it was a bad idea.

Maggie was more of a concept than a person those days.

In fact the shelter was practically barren, why Lydia chose to stay in Liz's room with her children was a mystery.

Liz picked Patty up from the crib, she felt a sense of affection but something in her was screaming that it wasn't her sister. Not really. She turned towards Lydia.

Lydia looked miserable. She was still beautiful but hadn't been taking very good care of herself. "Will you miss me when I'm gone?"

Liz curled her lip. She was so tired, even Lydia's voice was irritating. She just wanted to sleep.

"Liz?"

Liz put the baby back in the crib and looked at Lydia. "Yeah. Sure."

*                           *                           *

Kid relaxed as he felt the souls of Patty and the girl vanish. _I wasn't actually expecting her to listen to me._ He hoisted the injured girl higher across his shoulders, for a better centre of gravity, and broke into a gentle run. _We're not out of the woods yet though… Quite literally in this case._ He'd noticed the yelping and snuffles of the wolves had ceased but wasn't willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, until the world lurched. _Shit_.

The trees were gone, the meadow was gone and in their place a concrete wall appeared in front of Kid's nose.

"You're really starting to get on my nerves." The Eye's voice was low and acidic. "That's two souls you've stolen from me now and you're not about to make it three."

 _Look you're not the only one that's pissed with how this is turning out._ The stinging vanished from Kid's throat and when he turned his head he noticed that the girl was no longer a bloody mess. "Nobody OWNS souls, they're people not objects…" He set the girl down against the wall. "In fact, since I'm the current Grim Reaper if anyone owns the world's souls then it's me."

"What about when I take your soul?"

Kid laughed. "I mean, if that happens then sure! You're more than welcome to it, but I'm notoriously difficult to kill." He looked around; the wall that had spawned in front of him was a part of a stone box. No windows. No doors. No seams.

"Your mind bores me shitless, boy, I've already looked through it. Now you're weapon partner has some interesting things going on… In fact she's been my most successful project so far!" The Eye almost sounded excited.

_That's… worrying._

The girl's eyes fluttered open and she jolted into the corner, scrambling to get upright.

"In fact, I'm really not willing to let her go so I'm going to strike you a deal. Cut your losses: take Rydal and fuck off. You save two people, yourself and your younger weapon. I'll even promise not to steal any more girls from the shelter."

Rydal, realising that Kid was a real person, rushed to his side her eyes darting around the room as The Eye spoke.

"Go on now, run along."

Suddenly the walls were gone and a thin white path stretched across the void to where the pond had been, the koi carp and lily pads were gone but the water held its shape and recognisable sheen as a doorway back to reality.

Rydal yelped as the world shifted and clung to Kid's arm.

The Eye's voice came across as unbearably smug as she spoke. "Oh don't worry about your pride, I won't make you swear on it, just leave my world and don't come back."

Kid grit his teeth and tried to calm himself. _I have to leave, I need to get this girl home and there's no way I can reach Liz from this part of the illusion anyway._ Kid walked towards the pond, making sure Rydal was walking with him.

"Good boy!" The Eye sung, doing her best to make it as patronising as possible. "Now, don't come back okay? 'Cos if you do I'll kill you, your weapons and every person within a four mile radius of the shelter!"

 _I'm coming back._ Kid let out a shaky breath. _I'm finding Liz and then I'm gonna kill you._

"I have access to your thoughts, stupid boy."

_Damnit._

"Y'know, I think you're actually getting a pretty decent deal here but if you think you can best me then feel free to test your luck." The Eye's voice grew cold again. "You might be the God of your world but I'm the God of this one. Believe me when I say you're as powerless as you feel right now."

Kid wanted to retort with a snarky comeback but there was nothing he could say that would riposte The Eye's power play. Humiliated, he lead Rydal into the pond and the world lurched.

*                           *                           *

The first thing Patty noticed was that it was too bright. For a second she'd thought that the illusion had dumped them somewhere else, then she noticed the row of floodlights along the poolside. _Shit._

"Look! See? What did I tell you! They just disappeared and now they're here again!" The man that Kid had hit with a pipe from yelled excitedly from the end of the room.

There were now five men in the room, two of whom jumped down into the pool.

Patty's gut twisted. _I need to help Kid but I can't just leave her here…_ She turned to the girl and grabbed her by the shoulders. "What's your name?"

The girl was dazed but sensed the urgency in Patty's voice. "Carol-"

"Okay, Carol, come with me." She took Carol's hand and lead her away from the water, up into the shallow end of the pool and pushed her into a crouch against the pool wall.

"Stay here, don't do anything dumb, okay?"

"What? W- What's happening, I think I was kidnapp-"

"Look, I'll explain later!" Patty turned towards the two men and put herself between them and carol.

The first man, the larger of the two sneered at her raised fists and knocked his buddy on the arm. "Look, she wants to fight!"

The smaller man returned the smile weakly, Patty could tell he was the less confident of the two and that once she floored the first, he'd probably be too shocked to retaliate.

"You wanna fight me?" The larger man said. "Fine. I don't USUALLY hit girls but you're a gun not a gir-"

Patty charged forwards and put all her weight into a swing for the man's gut. She could feel the impact smother his words and as he doubled over, she brought her knee crunching into his winded face. _Black*Star would be so proud of me right now._ Force sent the man's head back up and Patty watched blood piss from the man's broken nose as he collapsed onto his back. For a moment everything was silent. As Patty expected the smaller man stared at her, open mouthed.

"Get her, Tony!" One of the others yelled.

Tony slowly shook his head. "No way, man!" He ran back towards the pool edge and vaulted up it past his exasperated companions.

"Are you fucking serious?! Look at her! She's like eighteen years old!" The three remaining men jumped into the pool and started towards Patty but were caught off guard by the sound of splashing from the deep-end.

Kid had returned with the other girl. She looked terrified but it was the stormy look on Kid's faced that had Patty worried. He guided the girl forwards but her pumps didn't have good enough surface up the pool's slick ramp and she stumbled backwards into him.

"Agh, Rydal!" Kid yelped as he fell into the black water.

Patty panicked expecting him to disappear again, but he just landed with a splash and crawled out. _The Eye must have closed that illusion then, what happened in there?_

Meanwhile, Carol shot upright as she heard Rydal's name and ran towards the girl, comforted to see somebody she recognised. She reached forward and helped Rydal up the slope, leading her towards where she'd been told to stay.

"What a shit show…" One of the men mumbled, breaking away from the group and heading towards Kid.

Patty used the distraction to her advantage and socked the closest man in the mouth, she went in for the follow-up hit but strong arms wrapped around her middle and lifted her off the floor. The man she'd hit spat blood and sauntered towards her pulling a flip knife from the pocket of his cargo pants. She kicked his hand and sent it skidding across the other side of the pool.

"Bitch!" He snarled, shaking the pain from his hand and rushing in to hit her.

Patty kicked the man in the dick.

On the other side of the pool Kid, now covered in algae and slimy black water, was having difficulty getting out of the puddle and called up to the man who'd reached the top of the slope. "A hand would be nice."

The man paused then started wheezing with laughter. "I'm not gonna help you, you little shit! You shot me in the goddamn mouth!"

"And I'll do it again! Just. As soon as. I- fuck. Get out of this- SHIT!" Kid had gotten about halfway up the incline then slipped onto his knees and skidded back down.

"Oh… Oh man this is amazing, this is really making my fucking day!" The man started down the slope towards Kid but slipped and fell forwards.

Kid stepped aside and let the man crash head-first into the pool wall, watching him fall, unconscious, into the water. He then tried one last time to climb up the slope, but after failing almost immediately, gave up.

Patty springboarded off the man she had kicked's head as he keeled over, and the force of her pushing backwards caused her captor to fall onto his back. With Patty's added weight on top and the fact he couldn't put his arms out to stop himself, the man's head bounced off the pool's floor with a sickening crack and he also passed out. Patty rolled off him and waltzed towards the kicked man.

He looked up from his aching genitals in fear just in time to catch Patty's fist and crumpled, not actually unconscious but pretending and praying that she'd leave him be.

"You guys alright!" Patty chirped towards the girls.

They huddled against the wall, mouths agape at Patty, then Carol nodded.

Patty walked to the slop and peered over the edge, laughing. "Whatcha doing, dummy?"

Kid had chosen to lay down, his back against the slope and legs hidden under the water, arms crossed over his chest and a feeble expression on his face. "You told me I could freak out later, well I'm doing it now. I'm having a victory crisis. We saved two people. Yay."

 _Oh jeeze_. Patty bit her bottom lip in an effort not to laugh. "We don't really have time for that now, we gotta take these girls home, yeah?"

Kid huffed. "You do it, I'm no use to anyone…"

"Sure you are!" Patty said, sinking into a sitting position with her legs dangling down the slope just enough to brush against Kid's head. "After we go back to the shelter we're gonna go rescue Liz, right? I can't do that on my own."

Kid didn't respond.

"Wait…" Rydal said timidly. "You're… N- Not gonna go back are you? You heard what she said…"

Patty cocked her head at Rydal then turned back to Kid. "What who said? The Eye? What did she say?"

Kid had closed his eyes but his brows furrowed at the mention of her name.

"She said she'd kill everyone if she was disturbed again." Rydal said. "I… Don't know who you're talking about b- but she can't be that important, right? Maybe It's best if-"

"You'd better not be talking about my sister." Any traces of humour had disappeared from Patty's face and voice.

Rydal swallowed as the girl who'd just beat up three grown men glared daggers into her. "I- I didn't mean-"

"We both know what you meant."

Rydal raised a shaking hand to her mouth and bit her fingernails. "T- That woman… She said she wouldn't hurt your sister! She said she needed her for something!"

Kid's voice was quiet and hoarse from the puddle. "Don't lie to her. The Eye never said she wouldn't hurt Liz," He stood and pulled the drowning man from underneath the water, propping him up against the slope so his head wouldn't slip back under. "She _implied_ that she needed her but that could change at any moment." He waded through the puddle towards the end of the pool, where the ladder was.

Patty sympathetically watched the meagre way Kid moved. _Never seen him swallow a mental breakdown that quickly before…_

"She said you couldn't beat her though." Rydal was trembling. "The T- Things she can do! Nobody can!"

"We have to try." Kid called back over his shoulder.

Patty forced a smile in Rydal's direction, taking in the worried look on Carol's face too. _They're scared and they don't understand half of what's happened to them. It's not their fault._ "Look, you don't know who we are but if us and our friends had a dollar for every time a _now beaten_ person said something like that to us then we could probably BUY that witch out. So give us a little bit of your trust, yeah?"

*                           *                           *

Within the course of a few hours everything had slipped from her. She'd lost a new soul to feed back into her power, she'd lost two more of her guinea pigs and her most promising trial run yet was showing increasingly overwhelming signs of failure. The Eye glowered at her final illusion.

This beautiful girl lay across her bed doing nothing, one arm behind her head and the other draped across her stomach, she stared vacantly at the ceiling and thought.

When The Eye sifted through her head, she found less memories from reality were present but this didn't satisfy her. _They come back_. She'd put the girl to sleep and reset her illusion but piece by piece she was becoming aware of her cage. _Another failure._

Lydia walked into the girl's room and the girl rose from her bed.

As the puppeteer, The Eye found Lydia's scripted entrance dull. _Time to shake things up._ The Eye spoke through Lydia's mouth, telling the girl she was leaving for good. _How quickly can I send everything to shit._ The Eye grinned.

The girl hugged Lydia, then bent down to plant a kiss on the baby's head. She ignored the younger version of herself.

She twisted the girl's world into something new, quickly planting in memories of passing time. _Two weeks should do it, or maybe three_. The Eye watched the girl stumble and grab her head, grinning as she heard her moans of pain. She could create psychological pain for anyone but depending on the person, the illusions came with real, physical distress.

 _I suppose it doesn't really matter if I abort this experiment, I doubt the reaper will leave me be_. The Eye could vaguely feel him and the others on her real world radar, she thought about pulling them back but she wanted the satisfaction of him returning willingly. _So boring though._ She sighed as if her career was being sullied _A lonely childhood, the stress of living up to his role and haunted by the knowledge one day all his mortal friends will die, but besides that? A privileged little twat with nothing interesting to play with._

The Eye focused once again on Liz as the girl answered the shelter's front door.

 _I do like cutting corners though… Boring or not, his soul should grant me all the power I need._ She couldn't suppress her grin as she thought of the new world she'd create.

*                           *                           *

Patty sat in the shelter's kitchen with a cup of tea. Rydal and Carol had explained everything they'd experienced in the illusions, then headed to bed exhausted from the ordeal. It had taken a while for the illusion to release its grip on Carol - it had dazed her and she'd had difficulty remembering that she lived in the shelter. Rydal was just terrified. Meanwhile, Kid was using Maggie's shower, having insisted that scrubbing any residue from the stagnant water off his skin couldn't wait. Patty hadn't argued: cleaning himself up would boost his mood and she needed time to think about where the doorway to Liz's illusion would be.

"Not doing so bad for yourselves, then?" Maggie looked exhausted. She'd been saddened to hear about Angie's death, but apparently hadn't expected any of the girls to return, so it was better than nothing. "What about yeh sister?"

"We're going for her next."

Maggie nodded. "Good to hear. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Patty wasn't sure how the illusions worked exactly, the entrances didn't seem predictable but since Liz had been taken when they were at the hotel, she was betting the door was somewhere between there and the shelter. "Yeah, do you know anywhere locally that's private? Somewhere that The Eye could store the entrance to an illusion?"

Maggie furrowed her brows in thought. "Maybe…"

Kid looked in the mirror. He'd just about managed to scrub all the dirt from his body, and although he was still daunted by The Eye's claims to godhood, his soul didn't feel quite so heavy. Maggie had taken his attire to wash as thanks for doing his bit for the shelter and left him a cardboard box full of various clothes, previous girls had left behind. Ruling a lot out through what didn't fit and/or he thought looked stupid, he picked out a black skater skirt and dark brown sweater. He felt pretty decent all things considered. Kid touched the surface of the mirror and watched it ripple. _We're not as prepared for this as we could be._

The call took a while to connect but soon enough the fog cleared to reveal Maka Albarn. "Hey Kid!"

Kid smiled when he saw her, thinking for a moment that she wouldn't pick up. "Hello, I hope I didn't wake you?"

She was curled up in an armchair that Kid recognised from her living room and decked out in cosy looking pyjamas, but she shook her head. "Naw, I'm just reading." She lifted a Lovecraftian-looking book from the folds of the quilt draped across her lap. "Why? What's up?"

Patty followed Maggie upstairs to a room at the end of the shelter. Maggie had mentioned a stack of old maps that showed things like now-disused subway stations that sounded useful, so Patty had insisted she get them out.

"Bloody storage room," Maggie sighed. "The place's a tip, we don't use it. It'll take me hours to find these useless maps, just you watch!" She pulled a key from the ring in her pocket and opened the door. "What the hell?"

Patty peered over Maggie's shoulder and gasped: instead of a room the doorway opened into a black, shimmering film - the entrance to an illusion. "Are you fucking kidding me?!" Patty shrieked. "She's been here the whole goddamn time!"

*                           *                           *

White lines where buildings should have been shot from the ground in a mock cityscape. Liz ran between them. Sometimes she loved Lydia and sometimes she couldn't bear to be around her, but she definitely didn't want her to die.

Police had been at the door. They asked for Maggie and brought Liz's younger self and Patty to the shelter. Liz wasn't considered authority enough but as soon as Maggie was informed on the situation, she told Liz to go find Lydia.

Liz didn't question how she knew exactly where to go, she was the least lucid she'd been in a while and it was important she got to the flat as quickly as possible. She didn't question why she was going instead of paramedics or the police. She didn't question why the front door was unlocked for her.

Liz's father was smoking in the front room staring vacantly at the TV. "About time." He muttered, flicking ash on the floor.

The bathroom wasn't very clean. Liz shut the door behind her and shuddered. _Is there something I could have done?_ She shut Lydia's eyes. The bath wasn't clean at all. _There are two kids now who'll grow up without a mother and their dad isn't worth shit._ Rage bubbled in Liz like a geyser, she burst back into the main room but he was gone. _His fault_. Liz found it hard to breathe. Her head was hurting. Then it all came flooding back.

Liz howled and punched the wall at full force. At first there was a delay but then she felt one of her knuckles pop and a flood of pain. _A_ _Delay_. Liz snarled through the pain. _The bitch wasn't expecting me to hurt myself_. She struck the wall again. The pain was right on time now, like she'd warmed The Eye up to a rhythm game. Liz could feel the presence watching her. It had become fully alert and thrilled. "Yeah?! You fucking enjoying this you sadistic freakshow?!" The walls came crashing down around Liz and suddenly she was stranded in the void.

Sitting cross-legged a few metres away, The Eye laughed and clasped her hands together in front of her mouth. "Definitely! You really ARE an interesting one!"

"So tell me what's real." Liz was breathing heavily. "You've obviously got better access to my head than I do, so tell me how much of that you made up." _Did my mom really…_

The Eye shrugged. "That's for me to know and you to wonder about for the rest of your life."

"Bullshit! I deser-"

"-Shut it. You're not gonna live that long anyway so don't fuckin' fret about it!" The Eye disappeared from Liz's vision but she could still hear the witch's voice in her head. "I have to thank you though, you've taught me something very useful: powerful emotion-based reactions to the stimulus I create can break the suspension of disbelief."

The world lurched. Liz stumbled as walls and scenery rushed into place around her.

"The world I create will have to be emotionally neutral until I can get more power."

Liz did her best to keep her footing as the illusions shifted. _The world I create?_ Time slowed down. Through a gap in parts of the illusion Liz saw a rip in the void, it's innards shivered bright silver and something innate told her to go for it.

The Eye panicked as she noticed the doorway she'd let slip.

Liz reached for it and the world lurched.

*                           *                           *

Maka had listened patiently to everything Kid told her, interrupting now and then to get more information where it was available. "Jeeze…" She said when he'd finished explaining the situation. "And to think I was worried about getting Friday's lesson plan done! So you don't even know where to start looking for Liz?"

Kid shrugged. "No… Patty's looking into that right now but there's actually a different reason I called you. The illusions, although not real and unable to cause you any bodily harm, seem to act as a way for The Eye to hurt you here." He tapped the side of his head. "The way she pokes at your emotions and uses your own thoughts against you reminded me a lot of-"

"-Arachne." Maka finished, her expression grim.

"Yes, everything you told me about when you entered her chambers in Baba Yaga ticks a lot of the same boxes as The Eye's magic. I was wondering if you could tell me how you bypassed it."

Maka hummed drawing her knees to her chest. "She targeted our insecurities then offered for us to become her puppets as an alternative… I suppose if you're put in the worst situation you can imagine, you'd do anything to stop it. It's definitely a tricky spot." She clutched her legs like she was trying to hug herself. "How do you tell what's real in the illusions?"

Kid tapped his foot. "That can be… difficult. Not so much with the people: I just use my soul perception and anyone who doesn't have a soul I know is being controlled by The Eye. Uh, it would have been nice if I'd have known that from the start because it would have made the whole _seeing a puppet of my dad_ thing easer..." He cleared his throat. "But otherwise it's a bit hit and miss, you only know you've entered an illusion because your stomach sort of drops like you're on a rollercoaster."

"What about things in the illusions?" Maka was trying to remain helpful and professional, but it was easy to see she was fascinated. "You said that Angie girl used a knife, right?"

"I had no idea it had come from reality until it appeared with us in our world once the illusion collapsed."

"Hmm…" She brought a hand to her mouth in thought. "That's really scary, actually."

At that moment the door to Maggie's office was practically kicked off the hinges as Patty came barrelling into the room. "KID!" She stumbled to a stop then raced to his side. "WE FOUND IT! WE FOUND- Ooo I love your outfit, it looks nice on you- WE FOUND THE ILLUSION! It's been RIGHT HERE in the shelter all along!" Patty looked towards the mirror. "Oh! Hey Maka!"

Maka waved, amused. "Hi Patty! Kid's told me everything he knows and we're trying to think of a plan. I'm sorry about Liz, I hope everything turns out okay."

Patty grinned and clasped her hands behind her back. "Don't worry about it! We're _thiiis_ close to finishing up!" She pressed her index finger and thumb together making sure Maka saw it. "And we know where we're going now!"

"Well there's something at least." Maka said, noting Kid's overwhelmed expression.

In the mirror behind Maka, Soul walked into view. His hair was messy and he wasn't wearing a shirt, so although his meister was active he'd probably been very much asleep. He was about to disappear out of the mirror's range and into the Kitchen, until Patty's yelling jolted him awake.

"Hi Soul! Soooul! Heya!"

Maka raised an eyebrow and looked over her shoulder, noticing her weapon. "Oh, Soul come here a second!"

Soul looked forlornly towards where the fridge was then bumbled towards the mirror instead.

"Kid's called, he and Patty need help with a witch who can do the same sort of thing Arachne did to us before we took her soul. Is there anything you can think of that might help?"

Soul grimaced when he heard Arachne's name. "Uh… Not really? The only advice I got is to have Maka with you, t' fish you out of trouble…" He started to wander back towards the kitchen again.

"Soul!" Maka scolded. "That's not funny! They can't find Liz and she might be in trouble."

Cracking one red eye open, Soul looked into the mirror at Kid and Patty. "Oh…" He sank onto the arm of Maka's chair. "Well… If I could go back and do that whole thing differently I think I'd just not be so… Weak, Y'know?" Soul looked towards Maka. "An' I don't mean like WEAK I mean like, I didn't really fight back against the magic. I was ready to accept the offer Arachne suggested."

Kid frowned. "The problem is she can make you forget who you are. If we showed strong enough willpower I'm frightened she could remove it all together. The Eye made Carol completely forget her own past and it didn't revert until she'd left the illusion. I…" He looked towards Patty. "-I mentioned feeling Liz's soul but it wasn't really _Liz_ anymore, The Eye can change you from the inside out and I don't know how you'd combat something like that."

Nobody spoke for a while.

"But… It's not REAL right?" Maka offered. "Like, you said once you took that girl out of the illusion she went back to normal?" She smiled weakly. "Maybe just grab Liz and run back out again, then it should fix itself! Hell, if you're worried about The Eye having too much control try to drag HER out of the illusion!"

Kid raised an eyebrow. _That… could work._ He sighed, then smiled. _I'm not sure she'd let us, but maybe with the element of surprise I can catch her off guard and bring her to equal grounds._ "It'll have to do."

"Hey," Maka said softly. "Try not to worry so much: we beat the kishen! This lady's gonna be no problem! Besides, you said it's your senses that trip you up in the illusion? You heal super fast so worst case scenario you can just get some pins and-" She mimed sticking the pins in her eyes and ears. "Let us know how it goes!" Maka said cheerily, closing the call.

Kid looked into the now-normal mirror, horrified. "What a horrid thing to say to me!"

Patty laughed and skipped towards the doorway, guiding Kid behind her.

"I can't believe I let her tutor 13-year-olds on a daily basis…"

"Tell her off when we get home! We have more important things to worry about!" Patty reached for the door and the world lurched.

*                           *                           *

Liz was brought to her knees by waves of pain in every part of her body. There was no justification, no spikes coming out of the ground or people attacking her, The Eye just wanted her to stop. _So touching this thing is definitely the right thing to do then_. Suddenly her mind was flooded with all sorts of images: some bad memories, some new creations in an attempt to frighten her.

"Cut that shit out!" The Eye yelled. "Just- Argh! You know I'm in charge here right? This is my world: I'm it's God. You do as I say. That _IS_ how it works."

Liz could feel her thoughts being reordered. What was she doing? _Reaching for that door… right?_ No… She'd been going to kill her dad. _Wait what?_ What? _No? The E-_ No. _What?_ Her head hurt. Somebody was messing with her. _Are they?_ She had definitely been going to kill her dad. _Wait who am I talking to?_ It was his fault her and Patty never got a childhood. _Who are you?_ He'd killed their mother. _That's not real… is it?_

"You tell me."

 _Huh, sure okay._ Liz stumbled in place, dazed and in pain.

The Eye had all but lost her grip on Liz, but the confusion would buy her enough time to patch up the doorway. The doorway could not be patched. The Eye frowned. That couldn't be right, the doorways only disobeyed her if somebody was using them.

Suddenly there were two extra souls in her illusion.

*                           *                           *

Patty stumbled forward, a weightless feeling in her stomach as she realised the illusion was already in its void form. She looked up. The doorway had spit them out a few metres away and there was a figure between it and them. "Sis!"

Liz turned away from the tear and looked at her sister with cloudy eyes. She furrowed her brow as she struggled to remember. "P… Patty?" She groaned and shook her head. "Shit… Wait, Patty?!" The vacancy was gone from her eyes.

Patty grinned and charged her sister in a hug. "Yeah, it's me dummy!"

Kid looked out into the void, he could see construction lines from where The Eye was failing to build a new illusion, a few more doorways floating in midair and in the distance The Eye herself.

Liz took Patty's hands and unwrapped them from her waist. "There's something I have to do." She smiled affectionately at Patty but there was something wrong in her voice. Liz reached out for the doorway and vanished.

"Sis! Wait, come back!" Patty turned, panicked from the doorway to Kid.

"Go after her." He said. "Make sure she's okay. I'll deal with The Eye."

Patty was reluctant to leave Kid on his own but something about Liz hadn't been quite right, and as much as she cared about her meister, her sister always came first. "We'll be right back." She said reaching for the doorway. "I promise."

Kid felt Patty's soul disappear leaving him alone with The Eye. She seemed to be meditating as she moved pieces of the illusion around. _She doesn't even know I'm here. No, that's too convenient_. There was a tear in the void that acted as another doorway right next to her and Kid thought about Maka's advice. _If I can get her outside then she should be powerless and I can beat her even without Liz and Patty if I have to._ He broke into a run, closing the gap between himself and The Eye, still she sat motionless. _I don't like the bandage: I can't even tell if her eyes are open._ There was about a seven ft gap between her and the gateway, Kid planned to hit her straight through it but when he was inches from her she vanished.

"You know what? This is a fair trade."

Kid put his heels forward to slow himself down before he hit the doorway but then that vanished too. He turned, all the doorways were gone. As he'd felt a pop when an illusion was created, The void almost seemed to shrink in and become definite like a true vacuum. Kid's stomach dropped as he realised The Eye had closed all access points to and from the illusion.

"Their souls for yours? Sounds fair to me." The Eye had appeared in the direction Kid had run from, several hundred yards away.

The void held an air of finality; all the lose construction lines and partly formed set pieces were gone and the 'floor' held their reflections like a mirror.

"You can't kill me." Kid said. "Your mind games are impressive but ineffectual at causing real-life harm." As far away as The Eye was, Kid could see the grin that spread across her face.

"What, you think I put all my eggs in one basket?" She touched one of the eye tattoos on her arm and it blinked. As it did, something thin and very sharp rocketed at him, catching the side of Kid's face. "Boy, I could kill you with my bear hands if I needed to. I've had to put down stubborn test subjects in the past you know."

Kid touched his cheek, blood trickled from the slice and the sting was bearable but robust. He had tried to dodge but in the blackness of the void, his depth perception was suffering. _She can quite literally stare daggers at me. Fantastic. But if that's it then this shouldn't be too hard_. He sprinted for The Eye.

The Eye laughed and straightened her index and middle fingers on each hand, touching them to her shoulders then running them down the lengths of each arm. Two, four, ten, twenty, forty-six eyes blinked on her skin and ethereal shards gathered around her, shooting forwards in waves.

Kid swerved between the blades, watching for the glinting of their edges to get a read on where they were. Seven blades passed him without fault, one narrowly grazed his right bicep and one he could feel tear through the pleats in his skirt, just missing his left leg. _You'll have to try harder.._

The Eye sent forward another wave of knives and snapped her head backwards. The world lurched.

Just like that, Kid could no longer see the knives, he couldn't see The Eye either. _She's taken away the light!_ The night vision his reaper eyes granted either wasn't strong enough in the void or by tampering with his head, The Eye had turned his vision off completely. Kid dived to the right and to his relief heard the "thwip! thwip! thwip!" of several blades passing him on his left. However, one did lodge itself deeply into his shoulder and he yelped.

Somewhere in the darkness The Eye chuckled.

 _One thing she shouldn't be able to take away is the air resistance, if these are real objects she's manifesting and not part of the illusion, I'll be able to hear them._ Kid did indeed hear several more knives rush for him and he dodged them, using his soul perception to see The Eye. He was almost at her when the lights turned back on.

"Yes, yes, you're very clever. Now let's get down to business." The Eye said, surrounded by roughly eighty thin, serrated blades.

Kid's stomach dropped. He attempted to dive under The Eye's right arm and get behind her but she grabbed him by the hair and threw him backwards.

The world lurched.

Kid hit something that felt like a cork board wall, then the knives rushed forwards all at once.

*                           *                           *

"Sis!" Patty called out as she fell from the illusion.

Surprisingly they weren't back in the shelter but they were close, the cold, night air and sound of passing cars belonged to an alley only a few blocks away. Patty looked where she'd stumbled from: somebody had tossed out an old mirror and its surface was black.

In the other direction, Liz careened towards the next street over.

"Sis!" Patty called out again, running after her. "Sis, what are you doing! We need to get back to Kid!"

Liz held a hand to her head as she walked, still in a little bit of pain from The Eye's prying but she moved with purpose.

"Sis!" Patty caught up to Liz and grabbed her arm, spinning her so they were face to face. "Listen to me!"

"I gotta kill him, Pat."

Patty pursed her lips and raised an Eyebrow. "Huh? Who?"

"Our dad- Well, this fucking guy who screwed our mom and-"

"Sis, what are you on about." She grabbed both of Liz's hands and tried to lead her backwards. "We don't know our dad, and like, who cares anyway! I know you're still confused but it'll wear off after a couple of minutes, we have to go!"

"No!" Liz's firm tone stopped Patty in her tracks. "You don't get it! We thought she left, right? We thought mom walked out on us, yeah? But we don't know that. She went to work one night and never came back! I always assumed she'd gotten tired of us but something bad could of happened to her!"

"That's crazy talk-"

"Is it? I know you don't remember much but do you ever remember a time she was cruel to us? No, she loved us, she wasn't a great mom but she tried her best and she just _disappeared_ one day, Pat! We never saw her again, and yeah she might of swept us aside but we have no proof for that."

Patty paused, Liz was right. It went against everything she'd believed but they really didn't know for certain that their mother had purposely abandoned them.

"So I've gotta go give this dude a piece of my mind."

 _And there's that crazy talk again_. "Okay, no. The Eye only knows what you know and we don't know our dad: she probably just picked the image of some guy off the street and you're telling me you're gonna go find this random fucker and bust him open like a piñata?"

Liz frowned, she wanted to tell Patty she knew what she was doing but the image of the man in her head was becoming fuzzier by the second, the streets didn't even look the same as in the illusion.

"Even if you're right that'd mean our mom is gone, so what does it matter? The results are the same anyway." Patty stepped closer to her sister and lowered her voice. "But I've got you, it's always been us two, yeah? Me and you 'til the bitter end, and honestly? If I'd had to kill our mom to get you back then I would have." She wrapped her arms around Liz.

The hug was all she'd needed to shake off the last of the illusion's grasp. _Strong emotions break the suspension of disbelief_. Liz returned the hug and kissed her little sister on the top of the head. "C'mon… I wasn't ever gonna come out of this thing anything less than A-OK, was I?"

Patty looked up at Liz and smiled. "Yeah, I know…" She jumped back from the hug and punched Liz in the shoulder. "Anyway, we gotta go: Kid's part of our family too and the pint-sized-fucker probably already needs our help."

"Yeah…" Liz said following Patty back to the mirror. "And I plan on paying that witch bitch back in kind for all the shit she put me through."

Patty stopped short.

"Huh? What is it?"

"The mirror." Patty pointed towards the trashed mirror at the end of the alleyway, it's surfaced no longer held the metallic sheen.

"…Yeah? What about it?" Liz hadn't been around to find out about the doorways into illusions.

Patty looked up at her, distressed. "The entrance to the illusion is gone. We can't get back to Kid."

Something twisted in Liz's gut as she remembered one of her confrontations with The Eye.

"But why? If he was going to kill her surely, just chucking him out of the illusion and relocating would be her best bet, right?"

Liz swallowed. "The witch referred to herself as a God, she said she wanted to create her own world, I'm guessing she means in an illusion but she'd need a lot of power to do that…"

"A lot of power?"

"Yeah…" Her jaw tensed. "I reckon the soul of a _real_ God would just about do it."

Patty's eyes widened in horror.

*                           *                           *

Logically the cork-board had to be real, if it wasn't then he couldn't be pinned against it. But then again how did the flooring in the illusions work? How did literally any part of the situation make sense? To Kid these would have been pressing questions if he wasn't _full of knives_.

Kid had actually micro fainted from shock, but awoke to excruciating pain. He hissed as he looked down, reminded somewhat of the few queasy dissection classes Stein had taught at the beginning of his academic career. Blades skewered the flesh in his arms and legs tacking him in place. Some had missed and some secured him by his clothes, whilst others were lodged deeply into his body. His clothing was too dark to tell the real extent of the damage, besides where his hands had been skewered into the board and the trickles of blood that ran down the bare skin between the edge of his skirt and top of his boots.

"Huh, that worked better than I was expecting." The Eye closed the short gap between Kid and herself, admiring her handy work. "It looks pretty cool to be fair."

She'd been careful to avoid vital areas, but the serrated edges of the blades, combined with his shaking, kept blood steadily seeping from wounds that he couldn't heal with the knives still in his body. The knives must have been quickly formed as they were thinner than the others he'd seen, resembling crude, barbed pins rather than true knives, but they got the job done.

"You wanna provoke me again?" The Eye bared sharp teeth inches from Kid's face. "You got more shit to chat about how I _can't kill you_?"

Kid was afraid talking would increase the agony he was in but in his mind he was cycling through every vile insult he knew and directing them at The Eye, hoping she'd look into his head.

"…No? That's what I fucking thought." She laughed and slapped her hands against her gaunt thighs. "This is fucking great! It's all coming together!" She tapped one of the more detailed eye tattoos on her head and something began materialising in her hand. "Obviously, we both know how this is going to end, but I've had a _really_ stressful couple of days so I'm gonna have a bit of fun. IF you don't mind."

Kid looked at the large knife that had appeared in The Eye's hand: ragged from overuse and not very clean, it filled him with a sense of resignation. _At least we found Liz._ He shut his eyes.

"You've gotten so quiet. How boring." Using her free hand, The Eye twisted one of the blades in Kid's shoulder.

Kid howled and thrashed involuntarily, upsetting other knives in his body. As he did, a couple of the blades slipped from the board, and although they were still impaled in him, they no longer aided in restricting his movement. Hope. _This is going to be a long and painful process…_

"Yeah, that's better! What's wrong? does it hurt?" She cooed, mockingly.

"…Yeah" Kid panted. "…S- omething like that."

The Eye grinned and raised her big knife.

"Tell me why M… Maba wants you d… ead." _I need more time_. As subtly as he could, Kid was leaning forward, letting his body weight ease the knives away from the wall behind him. It was excruciating.

"She's afraid of progress." The Eye lowered her knife and scowled. "She's embarrassed of me. I remind her of a past she'd rather not _degenerate into_ when really I'm paving the way forward! The old bitch is so primitive! We should be experimenting with new ways to potentialise our magic so it can excel and evolve as fast as possible!"

Kid hadn't expected The Eye to take the bait, but it was obviously something she was passionate about. _Perfect._

"The spider witch had the right idea but she became lazy, fattened by the empire she'd created… One of the greatest scientists in witch history slugged over by her own pride." She snarled and plunged the knife into Kid's forearm. "It makes me so fucking angry!"

Kid shrieked as the Knife tore through muscle and ligaments, only stopping when it fractured bone. _Okay! Too passionate! Too fucking passionate!_ The new intrusion gave him a chance to fight forwards again and his left arm was freed slightly. Kid choked as The Eye left the knife in his arm, it's weight pulling his right side downwards.

"Maba was impressed by my magic, so when Asura was revived she granted me some of her power and the task of creating another world like the witch realm. She wanted a secret place to hide in should things go fully tits-up. I've always been able to create images but, in the past, it had to be in an environment I couldn't dominate, where external stimulus could interfere. But this?" She gestured outwards at the void. "This is a taste of Maba's famous spacial magic. Here I am one-hundred percent in control." She smiled. "Here I am God."

Maba's words echoed in Kid's head: " Tell nobody what you learn." So _this whole thing is partly her fault... She really was trying to hide something._ Maba had granted The Eye some of her magic to use and The Eye had become delusional with the power. _Or has she always been this way?_

The Eye snarled. "And then she pulled the plug… Because of you!" She tore the knife from Kid's arm and thrust the point into his chin, using it to lift his head up and get right in his face.

Kid yelped as the knife was removed. _If she jabs this knife forward it's going straight through my mouth and killing me…_ As he swallowed, the tip broke skin and he felt a hot blood trickle down his neck.

"Do you have any idea what that feels like?! I was on the cusp of a breakthrough and Maba decides to throw all my hard work down the fucking drain! She's all, _oh no! You can't draw humans into your illusions anymore! We have to be on our best behaviour now because the GRIM REAPER says so!_ And I'm all like, _since when do we listen to those?_ But apparently your people saved the world or some shit and now we're all safe again, so this new world isn't needed!"

 _My friends did save the world._ Kid had managed to unpin his legs from the board. He stuttered forwards and for a second fear gripped him. _She must have noticed that, right?_

But The Eye was too wrapped up in her monologue. "So I abandon Maba's project and work on my own: this new world idea had great potential, so I made it my own. I can create literally anything with my magic and for a while that was enough, but it becomes _so boring_. The people I make do exactly as they're instructed and what's the fun in that? So I decided I need real people, people who can act on their own and make decisions without my help. People like your weapon." She let the arm holding the knife drop to her side.

Slowly things were slipping into place for Kid. _She's not delusional about being a god, she's trying to make herself into one…_

"Human beings are tricky things though, hard to shape them exactly how you want them. These girls I've taken have been tests. All failures but you don't progress in science without making and documenting mistakes. Recently I've been getting closer: the more souls I collect the more power I have over my next guinea pig. I'm _so close_ to having and populating my own little world! I'll select whichever people I fancy from your reality and take them to mine; the all greatest fighters and artists, the elite of every generation: my own personal society to play with. And now Maba's sent me a 'real' god." She grinned. "Maybe she was on my side all along… Ever think about that boy? You're going to die in here."

"Yeah… You can get fucked." Mostly detached from the board, he used one of his free legs to push off from the wall and unpin himself. With the small window that the element of surprise granted him, Kid lurched into The Eye, pulling one of the blades from his arm and plunging it straight between her eyes.

Or he would have if the blade hadn't disintegrated the moment it touched her skin.

The Eye laughed as the knife vanished, catching Kid by his neck as he fell forwards. "See! This is exactly what I mean! If I planned for a puppet to do that I'd know it was coming! You _almost_ had me there! If those knives weren't under my control I wouldn't be capable of gloating right now! _Thrilling!_ "

Kid spat, overcome with frustration and pain as he pulled another knife from his leg and slashed at The Eye in vain.

"Oh _sweetie_ , you can't win this! Although, your persistence is adorable. I almost wish I could keep you and make you the first citizen of my world, but I need your soul to make any real progress so…" She threw Kid backwards but this time there was no board waiting for him.

Kid crumpled in a pile and desperately tried to push himself up, but his arms gave way under his own weight. "G- Good…" He waited for the pain of the blades being pushed deeper into him as he collapsed on them, but then he noticed they'd all disintegrated. "I wouldn't want… to be part of your s… shit show anyway."

The Eye laughed. "That'd be a more stinging insult if you weren't about to look like a cute, little pin-cushion." She ran her hands across any exposed skin bearing tattoos and as each eye blinked, a corresponding knife appeared hovering above Kid.

He tried to push himself upright once again but this time couldn't even get his torso off the ground. _I'm going to die_. He swallowed. _Liz, Patty, I'm so sorry_. There were over a hundred knives readied above him, this time not being fussy about hitting vital organs. Kid screwed his eyes shut.

"Seeya, reaper! I'll make sure I put your soul to _excellent_ use."

The world lurched.

*                           *                           *

Maba had chosen an abandoned ship about half a mile out from the Brooklyn docks for a few reasons; first and foremost its location was convenient, being far from any human activity. Secondly, The empty boiler room was spacious and sealed off in case The Eye tried to fight or escape. Finally it seemed really cool to her to have a confrontation on an abandoned ship.

Settling her soul, Maba followed the strings of magic that connected the various spacial pockets she could sense. The Eye's realm wasn't hard to find: she'd made a sloppy attempt to wedge it between the witch realm and their current reality, but following her wavelength, Maba accessed the illusion. She couldn't see what was going on but felt two souls. Worryingly, the one she recognised as the little reaper seemed to be slowly ebbing away. Maba shook her head, plucking Kid from the illusion.

There was a short delay and then sure enough, the crumpled form of Death The Kid appeared on the floor before her. For a second, Maba thought he was dead, riddled as he was with deep cuts and seemingly unresponsive, then she noticed the shuddering rise and fall of his chest.

"Nyamu! [Look at the sorry state you've gotten yourself into! I thought you're supposed to be a professional at this kind of thing…]"

Kid's eyes opened wide in surprise and he blinked several times when he saw Maba. "W… What?"

Maba shrugged dismissively. "[I started the ball rolling on this one, I thought it was only right I should help to finish it. I was planning to assist you in neutralising The Eye from the start.]"

The dazed expression on Kid's face turned to one of annoyance. "Well you cut it a bit c- close!"

"[Look, you were obviously in peril before I _heroically_ swooped in to save you, so don't strop with me just because you don't know how to do your job. Nice skirt by the way, a shame it's all torn and bloody - that might be an incentive to get lessons on how to be a better grim reaper.]"

Kid sighed, choosing to ignore Maba's jab. _She did save my life._ "Sorry…" He tried to push himself up but was still too weak. _At least my wounds are starting to heal._ "I'm just a b- bit… shaken is all."

"[That's alright.]" Maba nodded. "[Where are your weapons?]" She'd already began searching before Kid answered and found them not to far from The Eye's pocket dimension. Funnily enough, she could also feel The Eye's utter bewilderment and rage as her plaything was stolen from under her nose. _Got them_. She focused in on the girls and warped them to the ship.

"Fuck!" Patty yelled grabbing for Liz. "She did it again! Alright you witch, where's-" She looked straight at Maba and cocked her head. "Huh? Maba? Why are you here?"

"H- Holy shit! Kid!" Liz gasped, noticing her meister's pathetic state and racing to his side.

Patty followed her sister and dropped next to him, grabbing his face. "What the fuck! We left you alone for like five minutes! What the hell happened?!"

"I'm fine." He said, fatigued. "Liz? You okay?"

Liz looked at Kid like he'd just asked her to eat her own clothes. "Uh, _yeah_. I'm not the one full of fucking _holes_."

"It's not that b- bad."

Maba cleared her throat and the girls turned to look at her. "[I'm about to bring The Eye here, I want to confront her on everything she's done, so a word of warning in case she tries something.]"

Patty looked from Maba to Liz then back to Maba.

In turn, Liz looked at Maba and then to Kid before turning back to the witch. "Uh… No offense, but I don't understand anything you say."

Maba sighed and let her head fall backwards. "[Reaper? A little help?]"

Kid managed to push himself up onto one shuddering elbow, then Liz and Patty helped him into a sitting position. "She said… She's bringing The Eye h… here."

"[I said more than that! Tell them everything!]"

"Maba, with all due re- respect - I'm f- fucking dying."

"[God of drama queens! That's who you are!]" Maba huffed, stretching out her arms and reaching for The Eye. She made a grab for the witch and pulled, feeling the pocket dimension collapse in on itself as its power source was removed.

A few tense seconds passed and then a scrawny looking woman with a blindfold wrapped around her eyes appeared in the boat.

Patty, who was supporting Kid's left side, shuffled protectively in front of him and as a result, Liz moved to block both her meister and her sister from the witch. " _Long time_ no see, huh?" Liz said sarcastically, lining her words with venom.

The Eye said nothing, arms hanging limply by her sides. She then turned slowly to where Maba stood. "I should have guessed as much…" Her voice was vacant. "You sure do know how to _decimate_ a life-time's worth of work, huh?"

"[And evil work it's been.]" Maba said calmly.

It could have been a laugh or a bark of resentment but the noise that The Eye made was bitter and defeated. "Oh what would you know! All you do is sit on your arse and pretend you know what you're doing! It's all _any_ of you leaders do! I had a plan! I knew what I was doing!" Her lip curled as she snarled at Maba. "I still. do. You can't stop me from finishing what _you_ started!"

Liz panicked as she felt the familiar lurch in her stomach and made a grab for Kid and Patty.

Then it ceased with no results.

The Eye paused looking down at her hands. Again the world lurched and again it stopped, more abruptly this time. " _What are you doing_?"

"[Remember I gave you those powers, Damia.]" Maba's usually chimerical voice was colder than usual. "[I can take them away again.]"

For the first time The Eye was helpless and she grit her teeth in frustration.

"Kid, what's she saying?" Liz whispered.

"[Come with me and I'll offer you a trial. It's better than you deserve but I recognise that I'm partly at fault for this whole mess, so I can hardly judge you on my own.]"

The Eye bowed her head. "I… Know how witch trials go. If you're going to kill me at least do it with your own hands." A wild grin split her face and she leapt forward, grazing as many tattoos as she could as quickly as possible. "Or maybe I'll take your other eye and build my world that way!"

Knives flew at Maba and Kid cried out in warning, then at the last second Maba warped a few feet to the left. _Spacial magic._ The Eye shrieked and sent forward more knives, this time using her magic to create shackles keeping Maba in place… Which she warped right out of.

"[Whatever powers of deception you had over people's minds and nerves in your own dimension don't work here! Your illusions are just that: eye magic. You won't harm me at this rate, Damia!]"

"Stop calling me that!" The Eye howled, sending blades at Maba from multiple directions and every single one being dodged." "My name is The Eye and I'm an all-seeing God!"

"[You're a smelly nutcase with no hair.]"

"Kid!" Liz snapped. "What's going on!"

"She's, uh… insulting her…" Kid said.

"Oh… Good."

"This is kinda cool to watch." Patty said.

"I'm gonna fucking eat you! Not even your soul! I'm gonna fucking eat you're wrinkly old body and everything! You stupid old hag, you absolutely _forsaken_ cretin, you- you dumb-foundingly _irritating_ waste of magical potential!" As The Eye created more and more knives she got increasingly angry, Maba was warping away from every single one like it second nature.

"[This is nice: I never get to exercise with friends.]"

Apparently that was the comment that sent The Eye over the edge. She neglected the knives and instead dived straight at Maba, teeth bared and black nails slashing like a wild animal.

"Alright," Liz sighed. "This is getting painful." She turned to Kid. "Will you be okay on your own for a sec?"

Kid nodded, getting an idea of what Liz wanted.

Liz reached out for Patty who transformed into her weapon form. The Eye was too overpowered by her own anger to notice the pink flash but Maba clocked the Thompson sisters creeping up and started exclusively warping backwards so The Eye had her back to them.

Liz aimed for the witch's head. "This is what you get, fucker." She shot, hitting her mark dead on. One soul bullet from a non-meister wasn't enough to kill a powerful witch and Liz knew it, but she considered it therapy for her time in the illusion.

The Eye turned on Liz, snarling. "What the fuck! How fucking DARE you shoot me: a god! I'll-"

Liz shot her again.

The Eye screeched and dragged her hands across her tattoos, manifesting a huge quantity of knives.

"Elizabeth!" Kid yelled, panicked. "The knives are real!"

The Eye sneered, figuring out one last way to cause them pain and sent the knives soaring at Liz.

"Oh shit…" Liz braced but the knives never reached her.

Maba had teleported the knives about a ft behind The Eye. Several sickening sounds, one after the other like rain hitting a fleshy tarp echoed across the empty boiler room. The Eye fell forwards onto her bony knees and then collapsed onto her front.

"Yeah… How the fuck do you l- like it." Kid panted.

Liz lowered Patty and let out a shaky breath. "Man…"

A temporal box appeared around The Eye covered in symbols the trio recognised from the night Asura was released. From inside, The Eye wailed and tried to claw her way out, but she was trapped.

"[Good work!]" Maba said in Liz's direction. "[I needed the distraction to immobilise her.]"

"Maba says well done." Kid said as Liz reappeared by his side.

"[Now...]" She turned to The Eye. "[Time to send you back to the witch realm. We'll deal with you there.]" Maba swept one of her long sleeves aside and suddenly the box, with The Eye inside, was gone.

Kid, Liz and Patty all felt a sense of relief as they heard The Eye's protesting yell be cut off.

"[I'm sorry about all this…]" Maba said, her one eye looking out sympathetically beneath her cumbrous clothes. "[I didn't realise things were going to get quite so out of hand! None the less, I owe you three a huge thanks, if I'm ever in a situation like this again I'll know who to call. Reaper, consider our alliance finalised: you've proven to be a worthy ally even when you have nothing to gain in return.]"

Kid smiled. "Thank you, Maba-sama. Uh, although I hope it's a while before you need this kind of help again I'm pretty damn tired."

"Tell me about it…" Liz said.

"[Well, The Eye is out of our collective hair now, so there's nothing to worry about in the time being, although saying that I shouldn't leave her in my realm on her own for too long, even in a spacial prison… So, if there's nothing else you need I'll be heading on my way!]"

"I think we're good." Kid said. "Thanks again."

Maba gave an elaborate bow and then the three of them were alone.

"…Did we win?" Patty asked.

"Yeah." Kid said, allowing himself to relax.

"Yay!" She pumped both her fists in the air then tackled Liz, hugging her and giggling.

"Ah! Pat, chill! Cool it!" Liz laughed.

Patty then dropped to her knees and grappled Kid around the waist in an equally aggressive hug.

Kid gasped as he felt wounds in his sides re-opening. "Ah! Patty stop I'm hurt!" When he'd been released, Kid turned to Liz. "You get a hug though."

"Whaaaaaa?" Patty cried, feigning insult.

Liz laughed. "I'll pass - this is the first time in a long while I've gone on a mission without getting any blood on me."

"Oi!" Kid said, stretching his arms out. "Hug me! I thought you were gonna die!"

"Wow!" Liz said, crouching down. "Nice to know you have that kinda faith in me, Kid." She ruffled his hair in a patronising manner then hugged him gently, being wary of his injuries. "Don't sweat it ya' little weirdo, you took in the two toughest sisters in Brooklyn, remember? This witch never stood a chance!"

"Yeah…" Kid said smiling. "I'm sorry for doubting you."

"Hey guys?" Patty asked. "Do you smell salt?"

Liz sniffed. "…Sort of? Why?"

"I think Maba left us stranded on a fucking boat."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way my tumblr is the same as my A03 name: thegrimreaperisanerd, so if you wanna geek out or, idk, draw something for me (Kid in his skirt and jumper please :3) then you can find me on there


	5. Happy Ending

The party was going swimmingly: they'd been assembled for just over an hour and Maka and Soul had only had two minor spats. In the amenity of their apartment, five young adults and a cat laughed, at peace. Liz and Soul had spent ten minutes arguing over which jazz record to play, when Kid had slipped on a post-punk comp that Maka wasn't even aware they owned. Soon after, Blair and Patty were howling with laughter as Soul enthusiastically sang and danced along to Adam And The Ant's _Prince Charming_.

Maka had let Kid know how disappointed she was to see him turn up in a smart pair of black jeans, rather than another 'funky skirt'. Kid had explained that it had been pretty much destroyed on his body and Maka had dragged him to her room to let him pick one of many that Blair had bought for her over the years. He'd returned downstairs with a few articles of clothing in a carrier bag, to uproarious cries of 'fashion show! fashion show!' from Liz and Patty, who he'd promptly told to _piss off_.

Ten minutes later they all sat in cosy reading chairs or sprawled across the sofa, the table in between covered in various nibbles that Patty was quickly bulldozing her way through. By ten PM Liz had had to stop her sister from choking about four times.

"Where've ya guys, been?" Blair asked, sipping on something pink and fizzy that she promised wasn't alcoholic. "Not seen ya around for a while!"

"Jeeze…" Liz groaned. "I don't even wanna fuckin' talk about it! We went on the biggest _ball-ache_ of a mission I've ever had the poor insight to agree to."

"Musta' been fun though…" She necked the remainder of her glass and shuddered.

It was definitely alcoholic.

"If you're so glad to be back, you can plan this class for me if you want." Soul said, having sat back down and out of breath.

"Yeah, you can fuck off with that nonsense."

"What are you planning to do now, Liz?" Maka asked. It had been her idea to host the party a few days after they returned to Death City, when she heard of the trio's success.

"I wanna go back to work with Patty but we've said we're gonna leave it for a month or so." She looked between her sister and Kid. "Some time at home just getting my thoughts in order sounds pretty good…"

Maka nodded, she'd heard the extent of the illusions in more depth once they'd returned.

"I thought Black*Star and Tsubaki were supposed to return, today." Kid said.

"God knows…" Maka sighed. "I got a call from Tsu the other day, apparently he's found some trials in a cave or something, wants to tackle them because nobody's survived it before. She sounded very drained bless her."

"Sounds about right." He chuckled. "Ah! Liz, Maba called me earlier and you'll be glad to hear that The Eye won't be bothering anybody again-"

"Wait, she dead?!" Liz sat forward in her seat, bumping some of Blair's now refilled drink down the front of her blouse.

"Heeeey~" She mewled.

"Uh, not quite but she's due to be executed later toda-"

"Fuck yeah!" Liz pumped her arms in the air. "Give me some of that good shit!" She took Blair's glass from her and took a swig.

"Oh! My god! It's liquid catnip and raspberry lemonade you _tool_!"

Patty doubled over, shrieking and slapping her sister on the leg, whilst Maka and Kid looked on in abject horror.

"It's… actually not as bad as you'd expect." Liz said, going to take another sip before Blair swiped it from her.

"You… sure you came out of this thing okay, Liz?" Soul asked trying to stop himself from smirking.

Liz sighed. "I don't know." Her tone was serious and she stared, eyes glazed, out of the apartment window. "The illusion was fake but it definitely came out a _real place_ , y'know? Like all this time I've pushed the anger I developed onto my mom because she wasn't there for us but I don't know what her reasons were."

Maka nodded thoughtfully, meanwhile Blair had become bored with the sombre topic and turned back into a cat, padding off towards the bedrooms.

"The work she did means she was probably in a tough spot in the first-place right? I've never felt spite towards any of the people I met at the shelter so why should I hate her? I think instead of resenting my mom, wherever she is now, I should push that grudge onto the people who refused to help. We're supposed to protect our own, y'know? What did police or the people in charge ever do to help her? Maybe if somebody reached out to our mom and offered her a hand we'd know where she is, we might even be on good terms."

Patty hugged Liz's arm, smiling with a touch of awe and sisterly love.

Kid chuckled. "Well I'm proud of you." He sounded genuine. "The circumstances weren't ideal, but it seems like you've grown a whole lot lately."

"Yeah…" Liz broke eye contact, shy from the sudden compliment. "Well, anyhow I've kinda made a decision about where we go from here." She turned to Patty. "I know in the past we've been reaching out to troubled kids with weapon abilities, but I wanna widen the net a bit. I think I wanna help anyone who needs it: you don't have to kill monsters and witches and shit to protect people. I just wanna stop the kind of thing that happened to me and you from happening again."

Patty saluted. "Sounds good t' me, sis!"

"Wow…" Maka said. "Kinda makes teaching seem a bit lame, huh?"

"Oh knock that shit off!" Liz chided. "You're a fucking _great_ teacher! These kids are gonna come outta this school fuckin' perfect."

Maka blushed and twirled a finger in a loose strand of hair. "Well… if you say so…"

Soul groaned loudly and dragged his hands down his face. "Alright! We get it! You're a godamn _martyr_ for the streets and Maka's a literal educational goddess, can we quit killing the mood now? I thought this was a party not a eulogy!"

Liz laughed. "Man, whatever! Don't have a go at me just cos the last cool thing you did was like a year ago."

Soul rolled his eyes.

"But yeah, you're right: we should celebrate right? We're all alive and well. Only good things to come from here, yeah?" Liz looked around the room, everyone nodded or murmured some form of agreement. "Great! Then let's fucking party!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold up! Did you read all of this? This whole fic? Congrats bud! That's some serious dedication! I can only hope that you enjoyed it! :D 
> 
> This had been a journey, writing and getting everything in order... Once again I wanna thank my two awesome artists @hikari-draws and @strawberrymeister and also the resbang mods! (who I'm gonna bet are super tired by now) This is the longest - completed - piece of writing I've ever done and it took me a really long time so if you DID enjoy it, I'd appreciate you dropping a comment and telling me what you liked! Or what you thought could be improved cos there are a couple things I left out...
> 
> Anyway! Thank you for reading and being a part of my resbang, enjoy the rest of the wonderful content people are putting out and have a good evening!


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